Claiming at an electioneering campaign rally at Kumasi-Asokwa, in the Asante Region, that the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC) got promoted to her current position by giving sexual favors to President John Dramani Mahama was inexcusably beyond the pale. But such tastelessly personal attack, coming from the tough-talking New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Assin-Central, in the Central Region, was also an all-too-predictable bromide to really ruffle any feathers (See “Hanna Tetteh Condemns ‘Personal Attacks’ on Charlotte Osei” Citifmonline.com/Modernghana.com 6/27/16).
By the same token, it cannot be gainsaid that the deliberate wait-and-see game of political peek-a-boo being played by the EC Chair with the Wood Supreme Court and the destiny of Ghanaians, vis-à-vis the Ramadan-Nimako Decision, is a personal attack against the sovereign will and integrity of each and every single Ghanaian voter, including voters blindly intent on voting to retain the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in power.
There is also absolutely no need, whatsoever, for me to duke it out with Foreign Minister Hanna Tetteh, vis-à-vis the qualifications of Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei to be appointed Chairperson of the so-called Independent Electoral Commission, because I was one of the first writers and critics to go to bat for Mrs. Osei when the latter was caustically lambasted by the clinically megalomaniacal former first lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings. I still believe that on both paper and sheepskin, Mrs. Osei was better qualified than the retired Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan when she was first appointed EC Chair.
The problem here is that I had not afforded myself ample time to learn more about her performance as Chair of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE). If I had, perhaps, my take on her competence would have been different. The preceding notwithstanding, Mrs. Tetteh is the last person to reserve the moral authority to lecture any Ghanaian politician about rhetorical decorum. We all witnessed the untold embarrassment she brought upon our country when the Foreign Minister deliriously took on the former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana like a half-naked and shameless brawling street girl. I have a deliberately cultivated habit of not doing Facebook, else I would have given her a cathartic spanking.
Whether Mrs. Osei slept her way into securing the chairpersonship of the EC is none of anybody’s frigging business. What is the people’s business is how she chooses to manage the affairs of the EC. And so far, she comes off as somebody who may not have been privileged enough to have been raised by responsible parents; for she recklessly and embarrassingly acts every bit like a putridly spoilt child. Unfortunately, Ghanaians have reached a stage in our political culture where such vicious attitudinal frivolities as playing peek-a-boo with Apex Court rulings cannot simply be countenanced.
If she cannot perform her professional mandate diligently within the functional bounds of the law, as eloquently and competently interpreted and handed down by the august Supreme Court, then she needs to get herself another 9-to-5 job that she may be more comfortable with and stop wasting our time and our scarce national resources.
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