Opinion
He may not like to either publicly hear or admit this, but the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Majority Leader’s decision to seek a seventh four-year term in office is wholly about the money and nothing else (See “I Have Not Decided Leaving Parliament – Bagbin” Ghana News Agency / Ghanaweb.com 8/29/15).
He cannot fool anybody but himself. But, of course, I don’t doubt his claim that the people of his Nadoli/Kaleo Constituency in the Upper-West Region want him to continue to hold onto their seat in Accra, while he also continues to feed them with a lot of gravy.
Yes, Mr. Alban S. K. Bagbin ought not to fool himself into thinking and believing that he has no expiration date, both existentially speaking and in terms of his welcome as a career politician. He clearly knows in his heart that it is time for him to give way to the younger generation, but he persists with the vacuous pretext of being possessed of a nonesuch “experience” whose loss would be detrimental to the cultural wealth of Ghanaian democracy.
I wish I could be taken in by such slime-dripping poppycock. I can, however, vouch that the man has remarkably improved from the days – of a decade-and-half ago – when yours truly was convinced that the Legon Law School graduate was either clinically demented or simply retarded. He, definitely, has come a long way.
He must also be thinking about the possible loss of the $ 300,000 - $400,000 quadrennial loot, apiece, that is legally stolen from our public till and dished out to each and every parliamentarian, including those just booted out of the august House by their constituents, in the form of “gratuities.”
After nearly 24 years in the House, Mr. Bagbin ought to have made more money than my Presbyterian cleric maternal grandfather made not only during the 60-odd years that he worked at break-neck point for the Church as a teacher, catechist, clergyman and district manager of Presbyterian Schools, but could not have dreamed of making in 10 lifetimes of active engagement in his missionary profession.
And as I wrote in a previous article, Grandpa T. H. Sintim was one of the first Ghanaians to take a short certificate course in 1948 or 1949, when the University of Ghana first opened its portals as the nation’s pioneering flagship academy.
I don’t know how old Mr. Bagbin was back then, for him to so cavalierly suppose that if he were to retire from Parliament next year, the entire foundational structure of Ghanaian democracy would keel over and smash to smithereens. The fact of the matter is that whatever improvements he might have helped to bring about in our National Assembly cannot have amounted to a hill of beans, as New Yorkers are wont to say.
It cannot have amounted to a hill of beans because Parliament, in its present condition, is a patent white elephant. At best, it is a Presidential Spittoon, in much the same manner that President Nkrumah was notorious for having reduced Ghana’s First-Republican Parliament to a virtual rubber-stamp of his unilateral and peremptory policy decisions.
Mr. Bagbin also claims that his advantageous standing in the international political community is so formidable that were he to leave parliament next year, Ghana stands to lose considerable clout in the global community. This, of course, is a grandiose claim with little teeth or bite marks to show for the same. For instance, the Parliamentary Majority Leader claims that he was Vice-President of the Committee on Peace and Democracy at the Inter-Parliamentary Union, an international organization of parliaments in the world; and that when he decided to accept a cabinet appointment from President John Dramani Mahama (or was it President John Evans Atta-Mills?) in 2010, his seat on this committee was taken away from Ghana.
What I want to know is precisely how significant is the Committee on Peace and Democracy in the scheme of Ghana’s political development? And also, did those on the committee who voted him into its vice-presidency know that Mr. Bagbin had been a hardnosed collaborator with Chairman Rawlings in the most undemocratic political activities in the country?
And also, the fact that the National Democratic Congress remains a veritable Mafia organization that continues to studiously undermine the healthy development of Ghanaian democracy? At any rate, how much, in terms of image and reputation, if not material wealth, did Ghana lose when Mr. Bagbin vacated his vice-presidency on the Committee on Peace and Democracy? And if the committee were that important, as he claims, why would he decide to vacate its vice-presidency, to begin with? I told you the man can only fool himself.
Now, let us take up this nonsense about the Nadowli/Kaleo NDC-MP’s having the clout to radically influence policy decisions in the West African sub-region. Mr. Bagbin claims that he is a member of the Executive Committee of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association; and that in the latter capacity he serves as the representative for the West African sub-region. But the fact of the matter is that only four out of the sixteen states in West Africa are members of the British-minted Commonwealth.
So what does such bragging really mean? Not much. Else, Ghana would still not be in economic receivership. Or is it that Mr. Bagbin is deliberately hiding something juicy from the rest of us, that if he let us in on it, would drastically undermine his imaginary international political clout, and with it the evisceration of his farcically presumed self-importance?
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 29, 2015
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