The wahala of Sikaman MPs (2)

Some Members of Parliament at a funeral

When the honourable Member of Parliament returns home after the visit to his home­town, he can breathe easily now. He could have died from financial strangulation or from Common Fund disease. He must give thanks on Sun­day at the church service for being alive.

As for the next visit, unless the second coming of Jesus Christ. Mean­while, he must reflect and reckon whether the visit to the constituency was a successful one, after all. It will then hit him hard that what he had wanted to do during the visit was quite forgotten immediately he landed.

The natives completely distract­ed him. For example, there was this man who said he had contributed to his castration, sorry circumcision. The man later added that he was his uncle called Koli Badu, although he has no such uncle.

IMPRESSION

He was also forced to chair a fu­neral gathering where he had donat­ed heavily to impress the folks and to glorify the size of his briefcase. He had given money to others to pay school fees, communal labour default penalties, free palmwine and tobacco snuff, court fines, whatever.

What he had gone to do, however, was not to cure poverty or alleviate it. He was not a doctor and therefore could not vaccinate the folks against the poverty disease, Africa’s most widespread epidemic.

He had gone there to meet the constituents to tell them about how the government was faring, what had been discussed in Parliament and his personal contributions to the de­bates; government’s infrastructural programmes and how they relate to his constituency and allied matters.

However, when he got that the natives would not be in the mood for official briefs. It was not their immediate concern if government’s infrastructural ideas were growing or ‘slimming.

That was a secondary matter and could not be entertained now, May be, it could be looked at during the next visit.

What was exigent was the palaver of the stomach and the issue bor­dering on the back- pocket economy of the men and the financial health of the white handkerchiefs of the women.

That, was certainly more import­ant than parliamentary news and the state of the Yamoransa or Aflao road or the Keta Sea Defence project.

The folks needed new funeral cloths, second-hand church clothes, new tobacco snuff containers and Charlie Wote, The MP must be able to address such pertinent issues first. If he couldn’t, then what was the use of the MPs Common Fund, they would reason?

So the petrol he had wasted brought no benefit in terms of his work as a parliamentarian.

EDUCATION

The people of Sikaman would have to be educated on the need for them to stop seeing MPs as their financial messiahs. MPs are legislators and are supposed to be making laws and de­bating them. They are not operators of charity homes and neither are they philanthropists.

The laws they make are not only for their constituencies but also for the entire territory of Sikaman. Their salaries are really not enough to finance school fees and frothing palmwine.

Because of the pressures on them, they cannot do their jobs the proper way.

They cannot even stay overnight in the hometowns. The Common Fund is not for palmwine and tobacco. It is to enable them to initiate constituen­cy projects and fund them. They are not meant for poverty alleviation. The Poverty Alleviation Fund is got through the assemblies.

HARASSMENT

Ghanaians must also stop the habit of travelling from their home­towns to Accra to base at the homes of their MPs to look for jobs. It is worse than harassment. It is almost criminal.

Sometimes MPs host about six people at a time. They have to feed them three times a day, and they must eat what the MP eats lest they go back home and say the MP discriminates in terms of stomach matters. That could cost him votes at the next elections.

You can find that where the MP’s accommodation isn’t big, his hosts sleep in the living room, some with their heads under a coffee table, one leg in the kitchen, the other in the bathroom,

What is worse is that they can snore heavily and the MP can hard­ly have a sound sleep. Sometimes the building vibrates due to the combined forces of the snorers. The house dog is compelled to bark because it is not used to such reso­nance. It might cause an earthquake.

The wahala of MPs is not cheap. People think it is all glory being an MP. It can also mean sweat, discom­fort and even the temptation to resign and be in a less stress-free vacation.

But at the next election, you’ll see all of them standing to be elect­ed again. Such is politics.

This article was first published on Saturday, July 13, 2001