Useless legalisms
Today, I am a happy person because a good friend of mine has secured preferment in his profession, from an active practising lawyer to the highest bench as a Supreme Court judge.
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I have known Lawyer Gabriel Pwamang from the early 1980s, when he was a student at the university, and was one of my students in my teaching assistant days at the university. I really do not recall whether he was taking tutorials in the History of Ghana, or in the Study of History. It only proves I am getting old.
He went on to major in law. Many people, who should know better, have sought to denigrate this presidential nomination on the shallow grounds of his political leanings, which being PNC, saw him rise to the top as a former general secretary of the party.
Scott, as he is more commonly known, began in the chambers of the late NPP stalwart, Agyare Koi Larbi, from which place he set up his own chambers. This was before the passage of Mr Koi Larbi in 2008, a month before the elections. Koi Larbi was not only a founder member of the NPP, but also was a two-term Member of Parliament for Akropong on the NPP ticket.
It is revealing that this fact of his political lineage juxtaposed against his senior colleague never comes up for discussion, because, in truth, it does not hold water.
Some of us have become extra-sensitive to all political phenomena which do not originate from our own backyards, snivelling and criticising everything just because we do not have the chance to appoint or nominate, not because we see anything wrong with what is being done.
As I write, several American commentators of more substance than critics of this fine nomination, are openly suggesting that President Obama be made a Supreme Court judge after his tenure. Which reminds me that the late Professor Adu Boahen told us, as Legon history students, that Popular Front Party (PFP) leader Victor Owusu should be made a Supreme Court judge rather than the President he wanted to be.
Two strange facts set to unsettle our permanent critics; a retired American President, William Taft, has actually been Chief Justice of the United States before. Secondly, according to the American Constitution, you are not even supposed to be a lawyer to be qualified for the highest court, much less have a number of years of experience as a prerequisite for nomination.
A fundamental problem seems the burden of some of our friends; an ideological bedmate would find for the government which appointed the judge in cases that come before him, or her. This is completely untrue. Last year, a Supreme Court panel made up of six judges appointed by President Kufuor and three by Presidents Rawlings and Mills decided the election petition case for President Mahama. Judges would decide on the basis of the facts and the law put before them, not otherwise.
I congratulate Lawyer Pwamang on his deserved promotion to the Supreme Court, and I am certain his undoubted abilities would be an adornment in our highest court.
Which brings me to another pointless legalism whose bad effects are obvious to us all. How can a political party founded by like-minded individuals, have a perfectly legal emergency meeting without either the chairman or the general secretary of the party? How? The reasons being bandied about are completely of no consequence. The party centre has collapsed. Similar problems in the now ruling NDC in 2003 or so, regarding Drs Obed Asamoah and Josiah-Aryeh, in the same positions, saw the party losing the 2014 elections. This event and its consequences are not rocket science. The same ingredients of mistrust, contrived or real, would get us the same result.
On the other hand, President Kufuor made sure he got the necessary executive in place to partner him for his successful 2000 presidential bid, same as President Mills for the NDC 2008 campaign. The only person in the NPP executive of 2000 who was not a choice of President Kufuor was late Major Quarshigah as national organiser.
Quite apart from the distinguished part Quarshigah played in the victory of 2000, President Kufuor had an effective antidote to any likely problems from that quarter; he traversed the length and breath of this country personally. The reason is simple; it was President Kufuor who was going to be on the ballot, not his detractors in the party.
But there is a more worrying underlying reason for this useless heavy concentration of political capital on internal battles which sap energies and drives away floating voters. Way back in 2008, it was Agenda 2012, then fast forward Agenda 2016, now it is Agenda 2020. Agenda 2024 will imply an ill-fated gerontocratic obsession with the presidency. If I want to be president, and that is all I want; why fret on a future when I’m dead and gone? Why? Who has given you that task?
Are NPP delegates aware of this inability to secure the top job of their candidate that is why they secure themselves with the foundation for the future with the selection of divergent personalities? Because nothing stopped the party from giving their preferred candidate the loyal, pliant executives to work with to secure victory from after 2008. This is an insurmountable conundrum which would be exacerbated by the fight to make some irrelevant in the coming campaign.
This obsession with pointless, in the face legalisms, is what has driven some of us into subdued silence after elections in Togo and Britain went ways we did not want. The Nigerian election was played here as if we were having an election ourselves, but the dynamics in that country were as unique and different from ours as one could wish for. Some of us are wedded to the idea of scaremongering, painting in horrible colours all we disagree with. Scaremongering did not scare the calm collected voters of Togo or Britain. It is rather our mistaken belief that incumbents must fall because they must because we say so which has taken a severe beating in the last few weeks.
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