Asiedu-Nketia must show Ghanaians respect

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.

We must get one thing clear: Contrary to what the General-secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) would have Ghanaians believe, the leadership of the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) committed absolutely no wrong, much less financial loss to the country, by causing Parliament to be recalled in order to consider a motion for the impeachment of President John Dramani Mahama, for criminally receiving a bribe in the whopping sum of $100,000 being the value of a Ford Expedition SUV (Suburban Utility Vehicle) illegally and unethically presented the then-Vice-President by the latter’s Burkinabe contractor friend, Mr. Gibril (Djibril) Kanazoe (See “Minority MPs Must Pay for Causing Financial Loss – Nketia” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/2/16).

That Mr. Kanazoe’s gift had strings attached to it, with Ghanaians suffering incalculable losses in the form of non-competitive contractual bids and/or awards to the Burkinabe citizen, is the issue that is really at stake here. And Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, popularly known as General Mosquito, cannot pretend that Ghanaians are, somehow, too obtuse or daft to fully appreciate the incalculable financial losses and great humiliation and unpardonable embarrassment brought upon them by the then-Vice-President of their august Republic.

Indeed, it is insufferably offensive for Mr. Asiedu-Nketia to smugly suggest that, somehow, the key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress have an inalienable right to literally take the longsuffering Ghanaian taxpayer to the cleaners and actually get rewarded and applauded for such acts of felonious criminality of the highest order.

That at the time of the filing of their flagrantly and summarily dismissed impeachment motion, some disgruntled members of the Nduom-owned and operated Progressive Paople’s Party (PPP) and the Greenstreet-led rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP) had already petitioned the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) is decidedly beside the point.

First of all, while by law any Ghanaian citizen with credible evidence could have petitioned CHRAJ for redress, nevertheless, it is Ghana’s Parliament that is constitutionally empowered, as one of the three coordinate branches of government, to call Mr. Mahama to account.

We must also significantly observe here that none of the political parties to which the CHRAJ petitioners belong has any remarkable parliamentary presence. To be certain, neither the rump-Convention People’s Party nor the Progressive People’s Party has any representatives in Parliament. Their petition cannot therefore be said to be representative of the Ghanaian people.

Already, Mr. Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, the 2016 rump-CPP’s Presidential Candidate, has publicly stated, categorically, that he finds absolutely no wrong-doing in the patently criminal decision by Mr. Mahama to take the Ford Expedition payola from Mr. Kanazoe on the blind side of the Ghanaian citizenry.

Mr. Greenstreet has also backed up his assertion by summarily and indefinitely suspending Messrs. Ernesto Yeboah and Nii Armah Akomfra from their respective posts of rump-CPP’s National Youth Organizer and General-Secretary, because these two most vocal and indefatigable executive operatives of the rump-CPP have dared to sign onto the CHRAJ petition seeking to have President Mahama investigated without the express approval of the entire executive membership of the party.

In backhandedly dismissing the Parliamentary Minority’s motion to have President Mahama impeached, Speaker Edward Doe Adjaho alluded to the fact that CHRAJ was already investigating the President’s payola scam. The problem here is that the Commissioner of Human Rights and Administrative Justice has yet to present any definitive time-table for the submission of his investigative findings to whoever may be constitutionally responsible for the same.

The National Democratic Congress’ leaders, including President Mahama, have more than amply demonstrated that they have absolutely no regard for the rule of law and the right of the Ghanaian citizenry to be let in on the way and manner in which their affairs are being handled by their elected representatives and the surrogates or appointees of the latter. This is where matters squarely stand.