Good morning, Mr Speaker; Hi, Education Minister
Even without the FAKS Investigative Service survey result published this week, I knew who was the Best Performing Minister for 2021.
Education Minister, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, deserves that title. The man was on top of his job in 2021.
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So how come this same knowledgeable Minister has goofed so badly right at the beginning of 2022!
Knowing that lack of stakeholder consultations nearly brought our three-year-four-year SHS to its knees, why did this brilliant academic dare to announce a reversal from trimester to semester in basic schools for the 2022 academic year without the knowledge of teachers, and the Minority Caucus in Parliament?
Speaker
Now to Speaker Bagbin. Nearly all Ghanaians agree on some truths about our current Speaker of Parliament: he is intelligent, brilliant lawyer, good debator, outspoken, no-nonsense etc.
Nobody can shout, “Order!” at the Right Honourable Speaker. Like everybody else, nobody can gag him but if I were him, I would voluntarily shut up; that is, if he is reading the body language of Ghanaians, even his most vocal cheer leaders.
This is because there is something else Ghanaians are agreeing on about Mr Bagbin, and it is that unlike any other Speaker in our history, we are hearing his voice too often.
I am not the best student of parliamentary history, but I am yet to hear a Speaker announce that he is “Number Two, not Number Three”.
He is the first Speaker to warn an incumbent government that they will lose the next election on account of a bill he does not feel happy about.
I thought of putting these thoughts on paper because by the psychology of sycophants, aka yes-men. People in authority never hear the truth about themselves until it is too late, and they find rotten eggs in their face.
That the Armed Forces has dared to withdraw four military personnel attached to Bagbin is rotten eggs, for a man of his stature, and you cannot blame the Armed Forces.
Like the President, Speakers of Parliament are important enough in our democracy to warrant state security, but should a little (even if it was a major) disagreement in Parliament over E-Levy be sufficient reason for Bagbin to fear for his life so much that he needs a beefing up of his security?
Not first
It is not the first time in our history that one caucus or another has withstood a Speaker, giving him/her a piece of their mind.
The late D.F. Annan wrangled more than a few times with the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the then Minority; so did Mike Oquaye.
I do not remember a Speaker of Parliament ever writing to the Armed Forces requesting to be assigned four soldiers, in addition to his 12 police guards!
The public is not told who in the Armed Force took the decision to assign four soldiers to Bagbin but evidently someone acted ultra vires; hence, the letter from the GAF announcing the withdrawal of their four men.
Reason: They were “detailed to the Speaker’s office without proper procedure.” That is a serious security breach, but it is a topic for another day.
For now, I have a question for Speaker Bagbin. Did he know he was not entitled to military security? If so, why did he react with a letter of protest, accusing the government of “an attempt to gag Speaker”.
As usual, Ghana was buzzing long before anybody had checked out the truth, the suggestion being that the Armed Forces action was politically motivated to frustrate the Speaker for his outspoken opposition against some Executive decisions.
We can excuse social media commentators; everybody goes there to shout, facts or no facts. Isn’t it worrying, however, the reaction of National Democratic Congress (NDC) MPs?
Everybody was talking, and yet not one of them had checked the facts. What are our children supposed to be learning?
Back to our beloved Minister of Education. It is clear from the reaction of stakeholders that the trimester-to-semester change is not popular.
Besides, the NDC will one day come to power and may reverse this decision, for good reasons: they were not consulted.
Unsurprisingly, and in my opinion, justifiably, the teacher unions have condemned it.
They are not only worried about the threat to quality assurance; they also have an economic argument that the new system will involve spending long hours in the classroom, and this goes contrary to their collective agreement.
Against these, hear the GES. They swear the new system will reduce pressure on teachers.
They say it will afford teachers time to upgrade themselves at universities, something they find difficult to do since the two academic calendars overlap.
Good intentions, but even the hungriest hen will scamper off in fright when corn is thrown at it.
The writer is the Executive Director, Centre for Communication and Culture, E-mail: [email protected]