As the legendary African-American human and civil rights activist Malcolm X once said, in the wake of the 1963 assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, “The chickens come home to roost.” At the time, Malcolm X explained that he had been bitterly complaining that the government had deliberately turned a blind-eye towards wanton acts of brutality by law-enforcement agents throughout the United States against African-American citizens and members of other non-white ethnic and racial minorities to no avail; and that it was only a matter of time before the law of the boomerang roped in the neglectful leaders who were comfortably and nonchalantly presiding over such atrocities in the name of law and order.
As we all know, Malcolm X would also be felled in no time at all by the assassin’s bullets. Actually, by the bullets of more than one assassin. In the case of Ghana’s Parliamentary Majority Leader, Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, however, the law of the boomerang comes in the form of his politically self-destructive decision to staunchly back the reelection bid of Mr. Alban S.K. Bagbin, the longest-serving Ghanaian parliamentarian and member of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), in the lead-up to the 2016 general election, against Mr. Mensah-Bonsu’s own party’s candidate in the Nadowli-Kaleo Constituency of the Upper-West Region.
At the time, his nauseatingly self-serving argument was that the parliamentary experience acquired by Mr. Bagbin was far more worth protecting than having the New Patriotic Party (NPP) pick up one additional seat in our National Assembly. Now, the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs is widely reported to be complaining that some constituency executives of the NPP have been scheming around the clock against some NPP-Members of Parliament, including freshmen parliamentarians, and that if care was not taken the ruling party could well lose at least some 17 seats and be threatened with a recession into parliamentary opposition.
So much for arrant nonsense and malarkey. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Mensah-Bonsu is a veritable political knave – in Shakespearean parlance – who has absolutely no respectable moral principles besides his dogged determination to hold onto his Kumasi-Suame parliamentary seat in perpetuity. Like Mr. Bagbin, Mr. Mensah-Bonsu has also been nicknamed “Suame Methuselah,” that is, a decidedly jaded politician who has long exhausted himself of his usefulness and any strategic creativity. And, oh, I forgot to add that Mr. Mensah-Bonsu had also recruited Mr. Dominic Nitiwul, the present Defense Minister, in his pro-Bagbin electioneering campaign.
I have said before that were I President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, both Messrs. Mensah-Bonsu and Nitiwul would not be serving as substantive cabinet appointees, in addition to their respective parliamentary seats. And I would not be the least bit displeased, come Election 2020, if these two unconscionable political opportunists and ever-scheming scumbags lose their House seats.
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