Tuesday,
November 13, 2012
We have identified the refusal by
traditional rulers to respect the constitutional ban on them as very troubling
because of the threat it poses to our democracy.
Left on their own, the chiefs can’t
profit from the politicking going on around them. They know how to play their
cards when the politicians fall into their trap by paying courtesy calls on
them. One clear instance occurred recently when President John Mahama paid a courtesy call on the
overlord of Tamale, Gulkpe Naa Alhassan Ziblim, to begin a campaign tour of the
Tamale Metropolis.
News
reports had it that the president thanked the Gulkpe Naa for praying for
victory for the NDC and added that he is certain of victory after the chief’s
blessings.
Through
his spokesperson, the Gulkpe Naa assured the President that he has the full
support of the community people in this year’s elections.
He
said President John Mahama’s “ascension to the presidency is not by chance. It
is ordained by the Almighty Allah. So whatever God has sown no amount of
drought can wither it. It is God who has planted the president.”
The
Gulkpe Naa said he was praying to the Almighty Allah to give the NDC victory in
the election, adding that President Mahama will bear fruit for all Ghanaians to
benefit from.
We
won’t miss the heavy political bias on display here—and it is not for its own
sake!
Two theories may be advanced to
explain why chiefs continue to flout the Constitutional provision. First,
chiefs have always participated in national politics. They were doing so before
the promulgation of the 1992 Constitution and find it difficult to break away
from the past.
Second, there are many loopholes
that the constitutional provision isn’t taking care of. The Constitution doesn’t preclude any
interaction between politicians and chiefs/queenmothers, which is nothing
strange. After all, as traditional rulers, the chiefs are not a-political.
Additionally, some of them have
ever been politicians before ascending to the stool or skin that has turned
them into traditional rulers, but they can’t shed the love for politics.
They are the embodiment of the
values of their people; and these values include the political elements. The
chiefs are political authorities in their domains and carry out functions that,
even though threatened by the modern system of governance under which the local
government (District, Municipal, and Metropolitan Assemblies) has whittled away
their powers (especially of adjudication and arrest or trial by ordeal of
culprits), they still wield enormous powers.
Take the Paramount Chiefs, for
instance, or the Asantehene as a clear example of a powerful chieftain. All
those regarded as subjects of the Asantehene dare not impugn his integrity and
hope to live their lives in peace, safe and sound.
Will we so soon forget the
Asantehene’s snarling at Paramount chiefs under him whom he accused of not
fighting for him when his name was being dragged in the mud following the theft
of stool regalia in Oslo? He is strong enough to defy modern-day political
influences that threaten chieftaincy.
We all saw what happened under
Kufuor when the Asantehene was the cynosure of all eyes, receiving all foreign
dignitaries visiting the country on official business with the government and
being favoured by Kufuor’s support to collect millions of dollars from the
World Bank in the name of development projects for the Ashanti Region.
Again we saw what happened at the
initial stages of the Mills administration when Togbe Afede Asor IV, the
Agbogbomefia of Ho Asogli, was appointed to positions that disregarded the
Constitutional ban against chiefs’ involvement in partisan politics.
Like these two chiefs, there are many
others, especially in Northern Ghana, who are politically active and have their
subjects under their armpits to dictate to. Such chiefs sway the electorate and
can go a long way to determine the fate of Presidential and Parliamentary Candidates
at the polls.
Another loophole is that the
Constitution doesn’t prescribe any punishment for a chief who flouts that
stipulation. It is left open—either for an individual to drag a deviant chief
to court or nothing happens at all. The latter is the norm, which emboldens the
chiefs to take sides cost-what-may.
Should we attribute this
dare-devil conduct to indiscipline or plain disregard for the Constitution?
There seems to be imbalance in
this constitutional injunction. It is one-sided in debarring only the
traditional rulers. They are not the only identifiable public figures whose
status warrants the restriction. Members of the clergy or leaders of the
religious bodies too (e.g., Chief Imam or the head of the Ahmadiyya Movement,
among others) also command a large following but are left off the hook.
Why should it not be binding on
them to refrain from partisan politics and be subject to a constitutional
provision as such?
With impunity, some have acted in
one way or the other and even made pronouncements to betray their political
biases. But the emphasis has been on only the traditional rulers all this
while.
Although we haven’t yet witnessed
any open confrontation between a chief indulging in partisan politics and his
subjects opposed to his political persuasion, we can’t just sit back
unconcerned.
It is in this regard that the
constitutional provision seeks to streamline matters to save the chiefs’
reputation, particularly, and to curb any communal violence likely to be caused
by the chiefs’ involvement in partisan politics to the chagrin of their subjects
who may toe a different political line.
If the chiefs themselves have
defied this Constitutional provision and are hiding behind “semantics” to push
their agenda through, there must be cause for concern as WANEP has alerted us
to, and which we have noticed all these years as part of the major problems
confronting our democracy.
Solving it calls for discipline. Clearly,
it is difficult for the chiefs to remain neutral or non-partisan. Why is it so?
Of course, they are political animals too and can’t sit down unconcerned for
others to impose their will on them.
In effect, then, the institution
of chieftaincy has all along been politicized and ridding it of that complexion
isn’t easy. It can’t be done because the chiefs themselves have dug in and the
politicians are smart enough to know how to hit hard while the iron is hot.
We must find better means to
handle the matter so that the Constitution can serve the purposes for which it
was promulgated. So far, it seems we are only whitewashing the filth that has
tainted our national politics, wasting precious time and resources running
around in circles. In any case, what has become of the Constitutional Review
Commission’s work?
After wasting more than 6 million
Dollars and producing a report whose contents were cherry-picked for
endorsement by the late President Mills, everything about the CRC’s work has
ground to a painful halt. What is being implemented to make any difference at
all?
Ultimately, our constitution will
remain a paper tiger for as long as it is violated with impunity without the
culprits being punished to curtail deviant behaviour. How will we ever make any
progress this way?
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E-mail:
mjbokor@yahoo.com
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