Features
Tension in Parliament unnecessary
The legislative arm of government forms an important part of government and aims to play a crucial role in the socioeconomic development of a country. This role is undertaken to ensure that issues relating to law and order are carried out in a manner that seeks to bring about peace and orderliness in all parts of the country.
A major function of the legislative arm of government is deliberation over matters that are of public interest for the good of the nation. This function allows members of parliament to freely discuss issues arising in any part of the state to ensure orderliness for the overall good of the citizenry.
Another major function is lawmaking. Without the appropriate laws, no activity can be properly regulated for the purpose of ensuring decency and the achievement of good results. This is why all the laws of the state are deliberated upon when introduced to ensure that only good laws are passed for the betterment of the country.
All Members of Parliament have been given the power to freely discuss their views when certain issues come up. By allowing free ventilation of views, the MPs are encouraged to touch on every issue of importance. This also explains why all MPs enjoy legislative immunity.
The immunity is meant to protect them from attacks from the public. This protection is important, and this explains why anything said on the floor of Parliament cannot be used against any of the MPs. However, any adverse comment should be made in the House of Parliament, not outside it.
What this means is that if an MP makes adverse remarks about someone at the Accra Sports Stadium or Babayara Sports Stadium in a manner that is unfair to anybody, the person concerned can pick up the matter and sue the MP who made the unfair remark about him or her. The MPs are very aware of this, so they are always measured in the comments they make outside Parliament.
Not long ago, the Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Bagbin, had cause to advise all MPs to be careful about comments they make outside Parliament. The Speaker explained, and he was right in doing that, referring to the issue of immunity for parliamentarians. It is hoped that our MPs will take this advice seriously and refrain from defamation or character assassination outside Parliament. We thank the Speaker for this good advice.
In light of the role of Parliament, it can be seen that the MPs are playing a good role in the development of the country. In fact, nothing can move smoothly without their input.
One problem that is of major concern to the public, however, is the needless tension that occasionally characterises deliberations in Parliament. The MPs engage in acrimonious deliberations with one another in a manner that suggests that the world will come to an end in the next five minutes. Attacks on each other may be said to be part of their parliamentary style, but this is still unacceptable, seeing that a noble place like Parliament serves as a good training ground for morality for viewers and listeners of parliamentary proceedings.
Sometimes the real motive for this can be seen as political, where one group of people may want to score political points over members of the opposing side. Such moves are not good and must be avoided at all times.
MPs from all parts of the country are all brothers and sisters who must acknowledge and respect one another as children of God. If this principle is followed by all the MPs, disagreements will arise, but they will be devoid of needless tensions that are destructive to social and political development.
Not long ago, the Minority in Parliament, for example, received instructions from their party leadership not to approve nominations of Ministers brought to them by the President of the Republic. The purpose of this action and directive was said to be that the size of government had been bloated.
This assertion cannot be true because the current number of Ministers is smaller compared with previously, as was experienced under the previous government before the coming into power of President Akufo-Addo.
The deliberations in parliament were delayed and went deep into the night of March 24, 2023. For some of us, this could have been avoided without any tension in Parliament.
At the end of it all, after a hectic session, the Ministers were approved together with the Justices of the Supreme Court.
It became clear that some NDC MPs voted to approve the Ministers whose names were submitted to Parliament. There is a range of 21 to 31 MPs on the Minority side who voted to approve the Ministers.
This has brought about high tensions in the NDC, and some of them have called those MPs traitors. There is a young man who wants to stand as MP in the Bibiani-Ahwiaso-Bekwai Constituency in the Western North Region, and this young man openly attacked his own MPs, claiming that they would fish them out and sack them from the party. If this is what this prospective MP has in mind, then he should know that he cannot succeed in his own party. People are free to make their own choices, even if they belong to political parties that expect them to behave in a certain way. However, attacking and insulting MPs as if they do not have minds of their own is not good and should not be entertained.
On March 24, 2023, the Speaker of Parliament was put in a fix. He tried to play fair to both the Majority and Minority sides. On that occasion, it became clear that the work of the Speaker is not an easy venture to undertake, for which reason we need to pray for him at all times. While praying for him, all the Members of Parliament, together with their party officials, should also take practical steps to promote unity, peace, and tolerance, as well as peaceful co-existence with all political factions in Parliament, so that peace will prevail in Ghana.
The issue of bribery raised by some NDC members against their own Members of Parliament should be dropped because it will only escalate tension within the party. If this advice is accommodated in a peaceful and positive manner, it will bring about peace within the NDC.
Differences in parliamentary debates are always welcome, but they should be carried out within the framework of peace and tolerance for one another.
Email address/whatsApp number of author: Pradmat201@gmail.com (0553318911)
Majority Leader Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu
Minority Leader Dr Cassiel Ato
Speaker Mr Alban Bagbin
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
