Osei Mensah's Clownish Act In Parliament

The Narcotics Peddlers Party has never lacked clowns, drug merchants, addicts and men of questionable and putrid character. In fact it produces them like layers on a poultry farm. One of them just stripped himself naked before right thinking and intelligent Ghanaians. Let's look at the drama that stripped him of his honor.

Yes indeed. The stage is set, dateline- 27th February, 2008

Parliament is in session now and the important issues bordering on the nation's progress are expected to be deliberated upon. The house is pregnant with anxiety. Suddenly a clown walks in, disguised as an MP with his fat file tucked away in his bushy, unshaved armpit. He stages a clownish drama carefully rehearsed to draw to himself an undeserved publicity.

He confidently takes the floor, stirring curiosity among colleague MPs. Clownish citizen, Hon. Simon Osei Mensah, the member of Parliament for Bosomtwi opens his file, pulls out something that looks like a poster and indeed it is. On the poster are two handsome, smooth-looking gentlemen and a beautiful woman.

They turn out to be the man NPP fear most, ex-President Jerry John Rawlings, the peoples' hero and another hero Manuel Junior Agogo and his mother. The poster is spread open. Suddenly the clown's voice pierces the pregnant but serene expectant atmosphere.

Hon Speaker, may I seek your indulgence to announce to this august house a very disturbing issue that is causing us sleepless nights in our Narcotics Peddlers Party. I hold in my hand a poster that is selling like hot cake featuring the pictures of Jerry Rawlings and Junior Agogo and from which Jerry Boom is reaping undeserved windfall. He is making money waa waa waa.

Mr. Speaker I desire we bring him to Parliament to answer questions. I find it difficult to believe that Rawlings could stoop so low to ...." suddenly his voice is drowned by a powerful penetrating female voice.

All eyes turn in that direction. "Stop behaving like a clown". The man is confused. He feels a twitch of annoyance and vengeance seeps through his dark evil heart perforating it. Shame engulfs him. The woman Hon. Akua Dansua, MP for South Dayi constituency persists rightly in calling him a clown. "Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is misleading this house, he should stop behaving like a clown"

What is the crime of Rawlings this time that Citizen Osei Mensah is losing sleep over? Some shrewd businessman capitalizes on the visit of Junior Agogo to his uncle Rawlings, the most popular face in Ghana , sees a catchy avenue to make money out of the pictures taken. The pictures find their way into the market and the businessman keys in to make some fast buck. And Osei Mensah's jealous spirit becomes restless and wounded. He clutches at the file trembling like a fish out of water.

And then an interesting drama unfolds before the eyes of Parliamentarians with Osei Mensah at the centre as the comedian par excellence just because Rawlings' name is involved.

The question is who released those pictures to the businessman who also went ahead and printed them? Does common sense not tell Osei Mensah that one of the journalists invited on that occasion may have dreamed up the idea of making brisk fast money out of the popularity of Rawlings? Does logic not teach that the pictures couldn’t have found their way into the hands of the businessman without the tacit connivance of some journalist?

TO ASSUME THAT RAWLINGS IS THE MASTERMIND BEHIND THOSE POSTERS IS THE MOST POINTLESS STATEMENT TO MAKE.

Looking at the face of hon. Osei Mensah on the front page of the CATALYST Newspaper of March 3rd 2008, he sure looks like one, a clown. A man like him certainly does not deserve to be in Parliament. What is he offering the nation and his Bosomtwi constituents, when all he can do is to carry Rawlings' poster to this august house?

There is a very serious cry in the land for potable water. Daily we are confronted with this frightening picture of men, women and children carrying jerry cans combing everywhere for this commodity which is a luxury under the NPP government. Yet Citizen Osei Mensah is not moved by those pitiable pictures and sees nothing wrong with that. There is only one thing on his mind, the name and the looming image of Rawlings and how to ridicule the ex-President.

This reprehensible behavior of this clown called Osei Mensah has made me feel he was carved out of stone. He portrays devilish stony character, a twit without conscience who delights in inflicting pain on others

An MP is expected to primarily represent his people effectively in Parliament and uphold the integrity of our nation while helping to churn out laws to govern the people. Partisan politics should not eat his heart to the point that he is blinded by vain and irrelevant issues that won't add to the general well being of the people and the entity called Ghana . One cannot really fathom what is eating this dark hearted MP

Osei Mensah cannot and will not talk about corruption because he is aware his party promotes it. He will not touch the issue of drugs that has given Ghana a notorious name. He won't talk about it because his party's standard bearer is accused of doing drugs and promoting it. He promotes tribalism because his party's former leader Prof Adu Boahene once said only Ashantis are the original Ghanaians and all other ethnic groups migrated from other lands and settled in Ghana . What arrant nonsense. What stupid statement to make.

Osei Mensah won't consider the polarization of Ghana along ethnic lines as a threat to the unity of Ghana because he has no love for peaceful co-existence. To him Ghana is Ashanti and Ashanti is Ghana so why will he lose sleep if other ethnic groups cry wolf? The issue of crime is meaningless to him because he feels secure. He has had no encounter with men of the underworld so all Ghanaians who don't belong to NPP can fall victim and go to blazes. I believe he must have read what has been going on in Sakumono and its environs where robbers hold sway with impunity.

He cares only about his allowances and salary from the coffers of mother Ghana . That is the caliber of people of people we have ruling Ghana .

To Osei Mensah and his cohorts in NPP as a whole, the fear of Rawlings is the beginning of wisdom and that's why they lose sleep over him. Of course Rawlings is an enigma. They have never and will never understand him. They wished he were like them. They wished he would be thieving as they do and think as they do. His senseless talk to the house he thought, would be deliberated upon because Parliament had nothing important to discuss. To this despicable character, Rawlings lives in penury and only Junior Agogo’s poster sales will lift him from it.

But before the Nations Cup, Rawlings’ beautiful posters were already on the market. So he was making money out of them too. Senseless talk indeed.

What beats me hollow is the foolish and senseless act of raising such frivolous and shameful issue before the honorable men and women. Citizen Osei Mensah was assuredly expecting his colleagues in the Narcotics Peddlers Party to fall over themselves in adulation while foolishly trying to ridicule the ex-President.

The pro-government journalists who are bloodhounds also carried it with bold headlines. Rawlings indeed is a money spinner. This is the most senseless statement put forward by a sitting MP. The Parliamentary seat is so cheapened a numbskull like Osei Mensah could occupy.

It is obvious this MP’s head is empty and bereft of pragmatic or useful ideas. We need intelligent people in Parliament not clowns and dramatists.

If truth must be told, a bigger chunk of our problems come from my ethnic group which we call Twi or more appropriately Ashanti / Akyem. We have turned this country upside down and sometimes some of us are ashamed of our antecedents in politics and in almost every aspect of living both here and outside. Even within this same group there is a serious dichotomy that gives cause for concern.

If an MP from my ethnic group could condescend to the infantile level of carrying the poster of a former President to Parliament in order to ridicule him, then we are a problem to the progress of Ghana as an ethnic group and not part of the solution. It is shameful. Yes indeed it is.

There leaders we have produced for this nation have been a terrible minus to our progress and not a plus. Was it not the Danquah / Busia group that began bomb throwing and coup plotting in this nation? What are the achievements of Dr. Busia in Ghana.Did Gen Acheampong not raise the stakes of corruption high with his senseless style of governance? Did he not introduce “kalabule” which has a new name as 419? He also had a powerful libido like J.A Kufuor and Nana Akufo Addo. Interesting coincidence? What about Gen Akuffo? Has Kufuor not come to introduce another dimension to manipulative and senseless style of governance where only a few are really enjoying and amassing wealth? They call it property owning democracy. What a shame.

Dishonorable Osei Mensah does not see that. He only has morbid hatred like most of his stock for the man Rawlings who redeemed Ghana from the abyss of disgrace to the pinnacle of glory and greatness that they are enjoying today, reaping from where they did not sow. He should rather be grateful to Rawlings for being magnanimous enough to have handed over power to the NPP.

That singular act gave Osei Mensah and his shameless group the mouth to talk today. Besides, no matter what they say, Rawlings has made them what they are today.

The record or history and achievements of Rawlings cannot be wished away or rubbished by a clown like Osei Mensah who is a non entity in Ghana . Who knows him? There are people in the village of this joker of an MP who have never heard his name. But Rawlings is a universal character.

What has Osei Mensah achieved for his constituency? What solid legacy can he point to that can be traced to him? When reasonably astute men are thinking of how to move this nation forward, the clown only thinks of how to ridicule Rawlings.

School children who don’t even have maturity will not talk crap like this Osei Mensah. Osei Mensah must bow his head in shame. School children are better than him

After all how many posters will be printed and how many people will buy, that will generate so much money for Rawlings. What is the population of football followers in Ghana anyway?

Osei Mensah’s Constituents should know him for what he is, a clown, cheap talker and empty head who tried to draw attention by trying to ride on the back of Rawlings and which has exploded in his clownish face.

Rawlings is not ordinary. He is a rare species of the human race. His type is found only once in a hundred years. If Osei Mensah thought he was taking Rawlings to the cleaners by his senseless act in Parliament, he only succeeded in making a fool of himself and making the world know he is an empty head. He has no Parliamentary qualities and does not qualify to be in Parliament

In fact every one should look for the Catalyst Newspaper of March 3rd 2008 and see the face of Osei Mensah if he does not look like one of those British clowns we see on television. I saw his face on the front page of this Newspaper and understood why he was referred to as a clown.

Thank you very much, brave Hon. Akua Dansua for standing up to the clown and calling a spade a spade.