Thursday,
June 19, 2014
The above heading is credited to
Nana Kwame Ampadu, the King of Ghanaian highlife, who used it to tell us an
intriguing story about life in the animal kingdom (“Ebe ti yie; ebe nti yie”, a
song that irritated the Busia administration in the Second Republic just as
Jimmy Cliff’s “Suffering in the Land” did).
To cut a long story short, we can
say that the moral lesson that the songsters wanted to teach us is simple:
while those placed in positions of privilege have access to the national cake
to do all they can with it, those who actually bake that cake are deprived of
its benefits. A gripping lesson to be taught!!
Let’s translate this lesson into
the Ghanaian political situation and we should see things clearly. Those who
have political connections make it while those who lack it don’t. In effect, “political
connections” in our time have become the “Open Sesame”. I don’t have it; do
you?
By its very configuration, the
Ghanaian brand of democracy subsists on the “Ebe ti yie” principle. Prove me
wrong, dear reader. I have grown to know that the 1992 Constitution is a
perfect blueprint for cushioning those for whom it was designed and for
restraining those seeking some leeway to change their circumstances.
If you doubt it, don’t go far.
Just read the Constitution closely in its entirety. Forget about the
Transitional Provisions because they were put there to do what you and I can
never subvert. They are entrenched. Do we have the wherewithal to overturn the
table? Forget it!
But the real issues beyond the
Transitional Provisions exist, which has become another avenue for
circumvention by those who know how to change their dancing skills to match
with the changing drum beats. No need for me to say more than required; but can
you find out what the Constitutional Review Committee actually concentrated on
as far as growing our democracy is concerned. The CRC chose areas of interest
to it and the appointing authority and had no more room for any contribution to
be made (as the recent news report attributed to it confirmed). Thus, a select
group of five or six people, mandated by the appointing authority (who is even
dead now) and supported by more than 6 million Dollars of tax-payers
hard-earned revenue just met in a closet after a so-called nationwide
collection and collation of views to determine for the more than 25 million
Ghanaians what they thought constituted the ambit of constitutional review.
Those of us who read their initial
report had huge reservations but no room to make those reservations registered
to change the paradigm. We still are nursing grievances concerning the
limitations of the 1992 Constitution but don’t have the democratic window
through which to register such concerns. Is that what a genuine democracy calls
for? And if we can’t register our concerns in a peaceful democratic manner,
what should we do? Resort to anarchy, which democracy abhors?
The late President Mills put that
CRC into action and expected something worthwhile to be accomplished in his
lifetime so he could leave lasting footprints on the sand of time. The CRC did
all it could, coming out with findings that a government White Paper reduced to
countable points. Ex-President Mills signed that White Paper to signal the
movement into a new phase of our democracy. A huge duplicity because not long
thereafter, he died, leaving the door to democratization still wide open and
the dice not tossable to give Ghanaians the benefits of democracy. Really
painful.
Any optimism for constitutional
review must by now have metamorphosed into regrettable despair. No one is
taking any action to prevent the Constitutional Review Implementation Committee
from imposing its will on us. Ghanaians are too docile, which is while anybody
at all can get up and beguile them into blessing their quixotic ventures. Some
political camps have been heard urging a coup d’état as the solution. Wayward suggestion!!
Thank God, the soldiers (those with the monopoly over the instrument of
violence) have allowed themselves to be cowed into submission and restricted to
parading the confines of their military barracks, marking time for nothing, or
being sent out on international so-called peacekeeping operations just to give
them something to do.
They seem to be regarded as having
too much time and too little to do in Ghana and must be sent out. Interestingly,
the pittance paid them helps seal their mouths and sour their appetite for
political power. Of course, their days of asserting their “manhood” through
interventions in national politics are over. Any soldier who thinks that he can
use the barrel of the gun to ascend to power in our time will be the dumbest
fool ever created by God.
But it doesn’t mean that our
civilian politicians should be given any blank cheque to do as they wish. I
have insisted all along that the worst threat to our democracy are these
civilian politicians who have learnt to adapt to the current political
dispensation, which they exploit with murderous abandon. Since the initiation
of this 4th Republic, they have used subterfuge, open aggression,
and senseless political posturing to cajole the Executive arm of government
into satisfying their greed. Take, for instance, their car loans and the huge
sums of money paid on their accommodation and you should be seeing the problem right.
Who is to solve it? Under President Mahama, we haven’t heard anything about car
loans and all that stuff. What might have happened to our blind side? Are they
even paying back those car loans?
Now, we turn to more worrisome an
issue regarding our constitution, where too much power is vested in the President
as far as the appointment of functionaries to manage the affairs of state is
concerned. The Constitution has vested in the President the power to appoint personnel
to head institutions of state all over the country. Just too much sweeping
power given him, which undermines the principle of democracy. If you doubt it,
just turn to the 1992 Constitution and let me alone.
He is given the mandate to
appoint personnel to offices, including those to function as Chief Executive
Officers for the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies. Is there a
genuine desire for decentralization to make our democracy viable?
I
turn to a viewpoint proffered by Kwame Okoampah-Ahoofe, Junior, (Ph.D.) who
shouldn’t be any stranger to those conversant with the discourse that goes on
in cyberspace about Ghana. He has rightly opined that there is a lot wrong with
our constitutional democratic arrangement. In his latest comment, he has said
that “President Mahama has yet to round up the appointments of Metropolitan,
Municipal and District Chief Executives around the country. I am even more
concerned about the president's apparent inability to fill all the
administrative slots at the district level, particularly in the often
overlooked rural areas, nearly two years after he was controversially declared
winner of Election 2012. What this means is that by the end of his
current tenure in December 2016, at least half of whatever policy agenda Mr.
Mahama had on his plate for these perennially marginalized parts of the country
would not have been fulfilled”. (See
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID=313240).
I totally agree with him and opine that this kind
of constitutional arrangement isn’t in the best interest of the country’s
democracy. It has to be changed so that democracy can be exercised at the
lowest level upwards. Anything else will be a sham and a platform for downhill
politics. That’s what the politicians in Parliament and their lackeys all over
the place are working hard to perpetuate against the will of the people. We
need to change this kind of bogus arrangement so that all that we expect our constitutional
democracy to give us can be available and accessible with the least effort. If
we fail to refine our constitution, we will end up descending into worse
circumstances and arming unscrupulous characters to perpetrate their greed,
evil intentions, and subterfuge to our country’s disadvantage.
Those of us making our voices heard on issues of
this sort know why we do so; and we will continue to do so, regardless of vain
threats, insults, and misplaced characterizations. Ghana’s democracy will not grow
if its obvious limitations and inadequacies are not raised and addressed. Those
who are enjoying the perks of their offices today just because the democracy
has placed them in vantage points should know that times change; and they may
not be lucky to deal with the negative backlash of what they are doing today.
History has a lot of lessons on this score that I advise them to learn and use.
In politics, falling from grace to grass is real; and it can happen when least
expected. Those who seek Ghana’s welfare won’t do things to destroy the
country. Where are the real patriots to save the country?
I shall return…
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E-mail:
mjbokor@yahoo.com
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me on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/mjkbokor to continue
the conversation.
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