Being A Parliamentarian Is Not A Permanent Career

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
June 27, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

We must get one thing clear: nobody has a permanent entitlement to being voted into parliament. It is therefore very wrong for Mr. Kwesi Pratt to suggest that the 24 (now 25, as of this typing and press preparation) New Patriotic Party (NPP) Members of Parliament (MPs) who recently got their mandates democratically revoked by parliamentary-primary delegates "could hurt the party's chances in the 2016 election" (See "Defeated NPP MPs Could Misappropriate Common Fund Cash - Pratt" Atinkaonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/15/15).

The editor-publisher of the Insight newspaper goes further to suggest that the defeated MPs have acquired experience over the years. Precisely what kind of experience, the National Democratic Congress-leaning Mr. Pratt does not explain. You see, the most appropriate analysis ought to have been for Mr. Pratt to explain just why the 24 NPP parliamentary incumbents were accorded the boot in the party's latest parliamentary primaries. In other words, if the "Defeated 24" acquired any meaningful experience during their time in Ghana's National Assembly, such experience clearly does not seem to have redounded to the benefit of their constituents, thus their being handed the boot.

You see, anybody's right to continue representing his/her people in the august House of Parliament is squarely based on how well or effective the concerned parliamentarian has been in bringing remarkable development to their constituents, and not simply how savvy they have become with regard to their knowledge and understanding of parliamentary protocol. It is also simply not clear precisely how the defeated candidates stand to hurt the chances of the party in Election 2016. Of course, the most egocentric and megalomaniacal ones among the losers could decide to cross party lines, by unconscionably pledging common cause with their counterparts of the ruling National Democratic Congress, or go independent. Such changing of horses mid-stream would only further confirm the righteousness of the cause of the delegates who voted to unseat them.

In short, defecting would only confirm the fact that these losers were bona fide opportunists who were never fully committed to the well-being and objectives of the NPP in the first place. One, however, is fully in concurrence with the Insight newspaper editor-publisher that the defeated NPP parliamentary incumbents need to staunchly back the candidates who defeated them in order to brighten their own prospects of landing significant job opportunities, should Nana Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party be voted into the Flagstaff House come Election 2016.

In other words, both the winners and the losers of the most recent NPP parliamentary primaries stand to gain substantially by working together to ensure that their party is returned to power in the near future. Mr. Pratt also notes that many of the defeated NPP parliamentary incumbents may be tempted to cynically and criminally convert the MPs Common Fund into their personal piggybanks, rather than for development projects in their constituencies, as the Common Fund is primarily and legally designated. The rationale, according to Mr. Pratt, is squarely based on the fact that the defeated incumbents may not have amassed enough loot to ensure a comfortable lifestyle, once they leave the august House nineteen months from now.

My answer to the preceding is simple. Have the use of the Common Fund periodically audited to promptly stanch any tendency for defeated and greedy MPs to be tempted into criminally embezzling the taxpayer's money. And then in the instances where it can be forensically ascertained that a particular MP has embezzled monies meant for the quality-of-life improvement of the people, vigorously bring such political criminals to book. Allowing parliamentary incumbents to hold the well-being of the people whose interests and aspirations they were mandated to represent and jealously guard to ransom, flagrantly defeats the very purpose and culture of democratic governance.

This is not the first time that parliamentary incumbents who were deemed by their electors to have poorly performed have been given the boot. And such condign booting, at least as perceived and executed by party delegates, has not been unique or peculiar to the New Patriotic Party. It has also, naturally, occurred in the National Democratic Congress, as well as several of the other splinter parties.

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