Opinion: Heads Must Roll Fast and Big Time! (Part 1) By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Independent Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu

Independent Special Public Prosecutor Martin Amidu said it not very long ago, that it would take at least a year-and-half before the key operatives of the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo Administration began finding an even footing vis-à-vis the smooth and effective management of the affairs of the Ghanaian electorate who offered its mandate to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) on December 7, 2016. And true to the words of this “real prophet” and former Deputy and, subsequently, substantive Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, everything appears to be fast falling into place. But, of course, it has not been fast enough for those of us who have been waiting on the sidelines in involuntary exile for over 30 years to see the real and true workings of justice, I hope, take roots in the country.

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Most of all, was the indescribable mess into which this country was plunged for at least some 8 years by people who had absolutely no love for Ghana and its hardworking and long-suffering people, short of what they could criminally and smugly acquire for themselves, the family members and close associates. From the get-go, it clearly appeared and, by the way, yours truly noted the same several times in the recent past in these very pages, that the key operatives of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) were determined to harass and stampede and, in effect, railroad, the meticulous, deliberate and systematically moving and constitutionally and legally guided Akufo-Addo-led ruling New Patriotic Party. The unmistakable reason being that under former President John Dramani Mahama and, before the latter, the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, more than much had been done to scandalously regress the general welfare and interests of the ordinary Ghanaian citizen that could not hold up to scrutiny.

Now, what most of us keen and ardent students and observers of the Ghanaian political scene have always suspected is fast coming to the lime light. And, trust me, My Dear Reader, it is not a pretty sight. You see, it was bad enough when the renowned young lawyer Mr. Maurice Ampaw did the count, not quite a while ago, and came to the morally staggering conclusion that at least 80-percent of all Deputy Ministerial Appointees sworn into office by then-President John Dramani Mahama were still attending classes in graduate schools in various parts of the country and even, in several instances, abroad, primarily in Europe, while still actively engaged as Deputy Ministers of State. But what was even worse at the time was the fact that many of these same full-pay-receiving practical part-time workers also doubled as Members of Parliament, another full-time job, for which they got fully paid as well but did absolutely nothing!

In other words, for the bulk of these voracious and avaricious double-dippers, as it were, at least one of these two full-time jobs was a veritable sinecure, that is, jobs in name only for which they functionally and practically put in absolutely zilch, in terms of man-hours or woman-hours, for that matter. This uncritically borrowed jacket of British political culture of having Members of Parliament double as Ministers of State is eerily reflective of the inescapable mental retardation of the Fourth Republican Ghanaian politician, especially of the breed involved in the crafting – or rather the gross mis-crafting – of our Fourth-Republican Constitution. Because Ghana does not operate the very socially responsible and functionally felicitous Westminster System of Democratic Governance or Progressive and Periodic Accountability. Instead, we have an American type of Executive Presidency in which the Chief Executive of State (CES) is not under any obligation to regularly report the activities of his government, stewardship or administration to the legitimately elected representatives of the people or Parliament.

And so, clearly, what the raging scandal involving those cabinet appointees of the erstwhile Mahama regime of the National Democratic Congress tells us is the immediate and imperative need for the generic President’s Cabinet to be functionally decoupled from the functions and activities of Parliament. The two are not one and the same, at least not in the lame and incorrigibly bastardized faux-Westminster breed of a functionally and fundamentally disabled political apparatus that Ghana presently maintains, for whatever such veritable administrative inanity may be worth.

Now, regarding the question of whether Mahama cabinet appointees who illegally, knowingly and criminally took home double paychecks should merely be required to return the other half that they clearly and obviously did not earn or deserve, I find such suggestion to not only be inexcusably offensive, the maker of such suggestion deserves to be summarily executed by firing squad. In the history and the very track-record of the Chairman Jerry John Rawlings-founded and headed erstwhile Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and, subsequently, the National Democratic Congress, so-called, people lost their lives and properties or both for legal infractions and infringements that far paled in significance to what is being presently discussed in this column.

There is a long-established precedent or rules and guidelines regarding the graduation/gradation or salary scales and perks of Members of Parliament who are tapped to serve in the executive branch of government, going at least as far back as 1992, or thereabouts, so there can be absolutely no debate or execuse of ignorance. The decision to blindly, wickedly and wantonly fleece the hardworking Ghanaian blue-collar worker and civil servant was one that was willfully taken at the Mahama-occupied Flagstaff House with the full knowledge and complicity of the former President. And the buck must stop at no lower desk and/or doorstep than that of former President John Dramani Mahama. And the resolution for this scandal far transcends the ignoble tentacles of our present Parliament, which has more than amply demonstrated that it is hopelessly incapable of either policing itself or altruistically and disinterestedly managing the fiscal affairs of this country at large.

The Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) and the Criminal Investigations Division (CID) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) must be allowed to totally and professionally handle this case, with the possible assistance of experts from such globally respected security agencies as the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and their British and Commonwealth-Area counterparts. Now let us discuss the subject of who has really been about the ungodly business of mortgaging the Sovereignty of the Ghanaian people, the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party or the Rawlings-founded and Mahama-led regime of the so-called National Democratic Congress?

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com  Ghanaffairs

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