The impeachment of Electoral Commissioner Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei is predictably bringing out the true political and ideological colors of some of the major players of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). And it is not a pretty sight to behold at all. For instance, we have had Messrs. Koku Anyidoho, the Deputy General-Secretary of the NDC, vow to set the entire country alight if Mrs. Osei, who was appointed by former President John Dramani Mahama, is even legitimately removed from office. Then, we have also had Mr. Abraham Amaliba, the obnoxiously stentorian member of the NDC’s legal team, so-called, and a bar-certified lawyer, promise to conflagrate the country.
What is disturbing in all this is the fact that the security agencies in the country have yet to act against either of these avowed nation-wreckers, for what clearly amounts to a criminal incitement to hatred, violence and the dissolution of the sovereign nation of Ghana as we know it, which is also a clear violation of the democratic protection of the inalienable principle of free public expression. And now, Ghanaians are also being told by Mr. Mahama Ayariga, the Harvard Graduate School alumnus and a key Mahama cabinet appointee, that if he so desired, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo could have ridden roughshod over Article 146 of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution by talking those citizens who filed the petition seeking to have the EC Chair and her two deputies ousted from office out of the same (See “Akufo-Addo Has Powers to Stop Impeachment Process Against EC Boss” Modernghana.com 12/16/17).
Mr. Ayariga, who is also the NDC’s Member of Parliament for Bawku-Central, claims that his former bosses, namely, Presidents John Evans Atta-Mills, late, and John Dramani Mahama, had in the past unethically and, perhaps, even illegally, used their executive authority and privilege to prevent the initiation of impeachment petitions against Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood. Well, this is hardly surprising because the leadership of the Rawlings-minted National Democratic Congress has an unenviable reputation for being scofflaws. In the case of Chief Justice Wood, however, it was quite clear that any petition that may have been initiated against her by assigns and operatives of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress was purely on ideological grounds, rather than on the basis of her professional integrity, or the perceived abject lack thereof, or her administrative competence or incompetence, for that matter.
The dastardly attempts to impeach Justice Wood may very well have significantly and foully impacted her clearly jittery, and even palpably poor, handling of the 2012 Presidential Election Petition brought before the Supreme Court of Ghana by Messrs. Akufo-Addo, Mahamudu Bawumia and the late Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey. Very interesting here because in the wake of the 2012 Presidential Election, and prior to the New Patriotic Party leaders’ filing of a petition against the same, the General-Secretary of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, had publicly and categorically declared that his own party’s candidate, then-Interim President Mahama, had not won the election fair and square at all. Rather, noted a visibly bashful Mr. Asiedu-Nketia, it was the abject lack of vigilance on the part of NPP polling agents and observers that had assured undeserved victory for the presidential incumbent.
What is both significant and interesting to observe here is that Mr. Ayariga is not questioning either the merits or demerits of the 27-point allegations brought against Mrs. Osei by several of her own staff members at the Electoral Commission. The former Minister for the Environment, Science and Technology, among a couple of other portfolios, is simply not pleased with the fact that President Akufo-Addo, unlike his two immediate predecessors, has not seen it wise or appropriate to use his executive influence and privilege to unduly interfere with the country’s democratic process. Mr. Ayariga also seems to be cynically convinced that the President may be personally invested in the petition to have Mrs. Osei removed from office.
That may very well be the case, except that Mr. Ayariga makes absolutely no critical attempt, whatsoever, to prove his case vis-à-vis the fact of whether, indeed, the grievances listed in the petition brought against the EC’s Chair and her two deputies are pregnant with merit or decidedly devoid of the same.
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
December 17, 2017
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
