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‘Who checks the buffoonery of Ghana’s Parliament?’
Wikipedia defines ‘buffoonery’ as a behaviour that is ridiculous but amusing.
Synonyms for ‘buffoonery’ include rowdiness, roughhouse, trickery, gamboling and mischief.
Thesaurus also says ‘ridiculous’ means; deserving or inviting derision or mockery.
According to Webster’s Dictionary, synonyms for ‘ridiculous’ include; irrational, illogical, outrageous, shocking, unbelievable and unthinkable.
• Mr. Haruna Iddrisu,
Minority Leader
• Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu,
Majority Leader
Just recently, that is, before the eve of the 2021 Christmas, Ghana’s Parliamentary Service Board was reportedly airlifted to Dubai to hold their board meeting with the Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament because the Speaker was receiving medical care in Dubai.
Reportedly, members of the Parliamentary Service Board were airlifted back into Ghana at the expense of the Republic of Ghana.
So, in effect, their plane tickets, the hotel bills, ‘the per diems’ and ‘the boarding and lounging’ were all reportedly paid by the Government of the Republic of Ghana.
Media reports indicated that the Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu was also in Dubai receiving medical attention, together with the Rt. Honourable Speaker, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, thus, probably influencing Ghana’s Parliamentary Service Board meeting to be held in Dubai at the expense of the poor Ghanaian tax payer.
But the question is: Is it very true that members of Ghana’s Parliamentary Service Board left the beautiful shores of the Republic of Ghana to hold its board meeting in Dubai?
Indeed, Ghana’s Parliamentary Service ought to issue a convincing statement clarifying the alleged Dubai Parliamentary Board meeting since the image of Parliament in respect of the alleged Dubai meeting is gradually but steadily , ‘getting close’ to the proverbial ‘Lavender Hill.’
Really, media reports have wrapped the image of Ghana’s Parliamentary Service Board into the ‘septic containers’, illegally queuing to off-load their ‘nose- breaking’ contents onto the ‘notorious’ ‘Lavender Hill.’
Readers, for now , I will not go into the ‘prognostics’ of the ‘Lavender Hill ‘ ‘palava’ and its ‘corrosive’ and ‘debilitating’ impact on its environment.
But the fact of the matter is that if an image is ‘buried’ in the bowels of ‘Lavender Hill’ in Ghana; it does not only speak ‘negative’ volumes about that image, but also ‘negative’ tonnes and tonnes of that image.
The Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, however, asks this fundamental question: “If the board meeting couldn’t wait for the return of the Speaker and the Majority Leader from Dubai; because urgent matters had to be discussed, couldn’t the board meeting have been organised virtually, so that other members could participate from Ghana?”
He further queries:”It would be most disconcerting if it emerges that truly, there was no virtual component to this board meeting.”
The North Tongu Member of Parliament ‘fires on all cylinders’. He says:” We must admit that as an arm of government responsible for financial oversight, especially over the Executive, this doesn’t look great if confirmed, more so, when Parliament has been trying with much difficulty, in recent times to rein in an unhinged profligate Executive.”
Another critic of the government, veteran journalist Mr Kwesi Pratt, also says:”It is of great concern that , for Ghanaians appointed to serve the nation , they would fly all the way to Dubai just for a meeting about Ghana.”
According to hin, “even if it was a training programme that the board had gone for in Dubai, not for merely a meeting; does it explain anything that a training for the Parliamentary Service Board is done in Dubai?
“If the meeting was done at Abokobi, won’t it have been successful?”
Readers, it must be emphasised that media reports about the alleged Parliamentary Service Board meeting in Dubai cast a ‘huge slur’ on the already tattered image of Parliament.
Some critics say:”If parliamentarians are not misconducting themselves on the floor of Parliament; by trading blows; disfiguring the faces of their opponents with knives and razor blades; then they are stealing our money, via their huge salaries and their ex-gratia.”
Others also claim that:”Parliament has taken Ghanaians for granted, so they spend the nation’s money without thinking properly,” contending that, “look at how the ‘double-salary issue in Parliament’ was handled harphazardly by the state.
“And with many good companies into carpentry in Ghana, Parliament at a time in its life had to rush to China to import tables and chairs for use in that ‘August House’. Oh! mother Ghana!!!
“And now, look at a mere meeting of the Parliamentary Service Board taken out of the jurisdiction of the Republic of Ghana in the unholy name of profligacy.”
Others also ask in ‘loud silence’: “Who checks the ‘buffoonery’ of Ghana’s Parliament?”
Contact email/WhatsApp of the author:
asmahfrankg@gmail.com (0505556179)
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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