Collin Essamuah: What a week!
Yes, what a week that was. The past week has seen many important and significant events happening outside our beloved country. Strangely enough, all these notable events will have their impact in our country.
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Today, I will concentrate on only a few that leap to my eye, for my own commentary and reaction, as space would allow. Dr Afari-Gyan retires from his position as chairman of the Electoral Commission, and he is rightly honoured with the highest award by a grateful nation for his sterling services to this nation. Of course, historically and politically, Ghanaians who have always complained about the role of election officials, especially when they lose elections, are those who disagree with this public recognition of this fine public servant.
For my part, I am very happy because I urged the President to do exactly this two years ago when the election petition was running its course in the Supreme Court in this very column.
If my memory serves me right, I first met Dr Afari-Gyan when I was doing my national service at the History Department at the University of Ghana. He attended seminars of an English doctoral student, now Professor Gareth Austin, on the latter’s researches into cocoa in Ghana. Dr Afari-Gyan would sit by me, the youngest person in the room, and regale me with stories about the head of the History Department who always chaired these seminars.
The late Mr Isaac Tufuor was the first person to secure a first class degree in history at the University of Ghana, Legon, and even the way he spoke indicated a higher intelligence and perspicacity in the subject.
Back to the subject in hand, what if President Rawlings had replaced the retiring Justice Ofori-Boateng with the other Deputy Commissioner, late Nana Oduro Numapau, Essumejahene and a leading chief and member of the Asanteman Council? You see, Nana Numapau was a victim of Apollo 568 in the Busia regime in 1970, and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) then would have had cause to be worried. In reality, the policy of ridding the civil and public services of Ghana of deadwood, corrupt and incompetent employees was simply a ploy to get jobs for the supporters of Prime Minister Busia whose party and, therefore, party members, had never tasted the offices of state since 1951, when Dr Nkrumah’s rule ushered in African participation in governance for the first time.
In other words, the emergence of Dr Afari-Gyan cannot but be fortuitous in our politics.
Nigerian imitation
As President Mahama appointed his replacement in the person of the highly qualified Mrs Charlotte Osei, we all missed out on the retirement of Professor Jega from a similar position in Nigeria and his replacement by President Buhari with a woman, just as President Mahama had done days before! The lesson here is that some of us scream too much, our humble efforts find validation in imitation elsewhere on the continent, and still, we claim to be dissatisfied. We are being unfair to ourselves and devaluing the genuine admiration others have for us.
Same-sex marriage
Then like a thunderbolt came the legalisation of same-sex marriage by the United States Supreme Court for all American states. With the universal consternation this has aroused globally, with its repercussions in Ghana, we all have forgotten the exercise of constitutional law is not an exercise in morality, which opponents of this landmark ruling seek to propagate. Of course, nobody can persuade me and countless other citizens that law and order have no moral value or purpose.
For our immediate domestic purposes, the supposed condemnation of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) flag bearer in the report of the Justice Appau Commission would be of more moment in the coming days and months and would definitely carry us into the 2016 election. It is a variant of the historical problem that I have my own shorthand question for: Why did Victor Owusu ran in 1979? This subject would definitely be dealt with in this column in future. I say supposed because the government is yet to publish the report, and the contents reacted to so far may be totally misconceived. I noted straightaway from the initial reaction from the NPP Communictaion Director, Nana Akomea that for Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Betty Mould-Iddrissu, Defence Minister Ben Kunbuor and businessman, Alfred Woyome never appeared before the Appau Commission but they were condemned in the apparent sections made available to us.
But the problem of the NPP spending precious time defending a negative, instead of projecting a positive, like Victor Owusu did in 1979 over his “inward looking’’ gaffe and his initial disqualification by the Aidoo Commission of Inquiry, though later cleared by the Justice Sowah Commission, looms large in the mirror for all of us. The issue of judgement debt has been politicised beyond the normal legal matter of partners to a contract falling out, which is common in the commercial world, to it being the equivalent of the punitive commissions of inquiry after the first and second republics.
We all await the publication of the report proper, and the white paper that would accompany it, and then the real fun would begin. Another interesting angle of this problem would be the final nature of the Tsatsu Tsikata versus Nana Addo friendship conundrum, with a variant in the Afari-Gyan story when the latter was the roommate of the former at Legon in the 1960s. I am a patient man, and will wait.
Increases in cost of water and electricity
I will be remiss if I do not comment on the increases in the costs of water and electricity, though the latter has been deferred, and the rise in fuel prices as a result of the full deregulation policy being implemented. I am particularly concerned about fuel price increase, and its relation to the appointment of Awuah-Darko as acting boss of Tema Oil Refinery. It is imperative and crucial that this fine man, as a matter of urgency, should return TOR to its pre-eminent position as the supplier of petroleum products for two reasons. First, refineries are not overly profitable institutions worldwide, but they provide substantial employment to citizens of countries which have them, and secondly and more important, he must eradicate the deleterious participation of the Bulk Distribution Companies (BDCs) in the petroleum business in this country, because they are an indefensible drain on government resources.
The last matter that leaps to the eye is the pending suit challenging the right of the President to appoint judges to our Supreme Court. Because of the pendency of the action before the highest court, I shall restrict my comment to a recitation of the dictionary meaning of the word advice; an opinion or suggestion about what someone should do, a recommendation regarding a decision or course of conduct.
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