Prince Adjei-Mensah must be called to order

The call by Mrs. Frema Opare, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s Chief-of-Staff, for IGP John Kudalor to promptly effect the arrest and rigorous prosecution of any individual or groups of individuals causing the violent and/or illegal seizure of public properties, in the name of the criminal suspects’ purported membership of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), could not have come at a more opportune moment.

It therefore comes as a great disappointment for Mr. Prince Adjei-Mensah, who allegedly belongs to a so-called Concerned Group in the Asante Region, to be presuming to have been invested with the authority of being able to prohibit Mrs. Opare from entering the Asante Region, much less attempting to stop the Presidential Chief-of-Staff from participating in any party-sponsored activities in the country’s most populous region.

Needless to say, not even Mr. Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, aka Chairman Wontumi, the ruling party’s Asante Regional Chairman, and arguably the most dynamic of all NPP regional chairs, could so cavalierly presume to prohibit the President’s Chief-of-Staff from entering the Asante Region.

It is also rather disturbing for Mr. Adjei-Mensah to pretend as if the aggressive seizure of publicly owned properties, allegedly undertaken by some rampaging party supporters and sympathizers, befits a civilized constitutional democracy like Ghana. Indeed, until she issued her order to the Inspector-General of Police, on behalf of President Akufo-Addo, many of us avid watchers, supporters and sympathizers of the ruling New Patriotic Party were beginning to get very worried about the state of the conduct of political affairs in the country.

For, the very notion that, somehow, NPP partisans, by virtue of the party’s landslide victory in last December’s general election, have a right to resort to the aggressive seizure of public properties, reeks of nothing short of the inexcusably preposterous.

There are laid-down procedures for the takeover of public institutions and properties in the event of a change of government in this country. And the fact that partisans of the main opposition National Democratic Congress appear to have set the sort of barbaric precedent being presently blindly followed by some grossly misguided New Patriotic Party supporters and Sympathizers, does not automatically legitimize such insufferably criminal behavior.

It is also rather presumptuous on the part of Mr. Adjei-Mensah to presume to determine the role or level of contribution offered by Nana Akufo-Addo’s Chief-of-Staff, to both the party and then-Candidate Akufo-Addo, in the lead-up to the 2016 general election. That determination properly belongs to the memberships of both the party’s National Council (NC) and the National Executive Committee (NEC).

If the memberships of the NPP-NC and the NPP-NEC are not complaining about Mrs. Opare’s role and standing in the party, then upon what basis of authority or standing does Mr. Adjei-Mensah presume to impugn either the professional qualifications, authority or the right of Mrs. Opare to perform her administrative duties by virtue of whose capacity she issued her “call-to-order” to IGP Kudalor on behalf of President Akufo-Addo?

Indeed, if Mr. Adjei-Mensah really desires to remain in the New Patriotic Party in good standing, then he had better promptly conduct himself with dignity and according to the civilized and democratic principles and tenets so laudably espoused and practiced by the party’s sources of ideological and spiritual inspiration and exemplary behavior, namely, Messrs.

J. B. Danquah, K. A. Busia and S. D. Dombo. Needless to say, his virulent and rabidly anti-social public pronouncements make Mr. Adjei-Mensah decidedly as criminally culpable as the wantonly lawless and antisocial thugs whose immitigably primitive and barbaric cause he clearly and shamelessly seeks to promote.