By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
To avoid the kind of circus-like political crisis that former President Jerry John Rawlings and his wife came dangerously close to wreaking on the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), maybe Ghana needs to examine and adopt some of the constructive measures which the Latin-American people of Guatemala recently used in resolving a similar problem (See “Guatemala Upholds Ban on Ex-First Lady’s Presidential Bid” Los Angeles Times 8/9/11).
Like Ghana’s Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, Guatemala’s former First Lady, Ms. Sandra Torres, has long nursed presidential ambitions. However, according to the constitution of her Central-American country, all close relatives of a presidential incumbent are ineligible to present themselves for election to the same post. And so coming to the grim realization of her vaulting ambition for the presidency being decisively preempted, Ms. Torres, a high-end entrepreneur, decided to finesse the constitution with her doting husband’s complicity, by conveniently agreeing to officially sever their marital relationship last spring.
And for a while, the strategy seemed like a quite savvy move. For, the Guatemalan constitution defines “close relatives” of the incumbent president as those who are related to the latter by blood. And since other than the children that they both have in common, President Alvaro Colom and his wife are not related by blood, the couple’s “divorce-of-convenience” clearly seemed like a marvelous stroke of genius.
Alas, as the Guatemala Constitutional Court recently ruled, the divorce between President Alvaro Colom and his wife Sandra Torres did not meet the criterion of an ordinary divorce, since the latter was primarily predicated upon the former first lady’s unconstitutional ambition to succeeding her husband, rather than the traditional motive of conjugal incompatibility. The Guatemalan Constitutional Court therefore declared Ms. Torres to be ineligible to contest that country’s presidency.
In large part, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court observed poignantly that throughout most of her husband’s four-year term, the couple legitimately cohabited as husband and wife in the country’s presidential palace; and that it was, in fact, only during the last year, or so, that as a result of their apparent reluctance to give up their presidential perks and palatial comfort, the couple decided to execute a make-believe parting of the ways process.
What makes the Guatemalan case relevant to Fourth-Republican Ghana regards the virtual constitutional crisis into which Mr. Rawlings and his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, nearly plunged the ruling National Democratic Congress. And while the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) does not appear to be imminently faced with a similar situation, nevertheless, the possibility of a similar situation arising among the ranks of the NPP in the near future cannot be ruled out altogether.
What is, therefore, being suggested here is two-fold. One, that all legitimately registered Ghanaian political parties insert in their constitutions, the Guatemalan stipulation to the effect that no close/blood relative of a presidential nominee may be eligible to compete for the same position immediately, or for a specified temporal duration, after the latter had been vacated by a relative. The second step is to have the same stipulation enshrined in our Fourth-Republican Constitution.
Needless to say, had such provision existed, Mrs. Rawlings’ rather lurid ambition to convert the presidency into a dynasty would have been promptly nipped in the bud. And on the latter score must also be promptly added that the existence of such a proviso would equally have ensured that Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor, the younger brother of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor and Ghana’s former Defense Minister, would not have thrown his party and the country into a tizzy over his equally curious and unsavory desire to succeed his elder brother. Guatemala’s Sandra Torres also shares her notoriety of allegedly misappropriating public funds and credit facilities, to further her private ambitions, with Mrs. Rawlings. Likewise, both former first ladies have been linked to state security violations of human rights and operational illegalities.
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of 22 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###