Nobel Prize for Honourable Members of Ghana’s Parliament

By Mawutodzi Kodzo Abissath

Ghana's honorable members of Parliament attentively listening to their President

The wisdom of our African ancestors is reflected in this proverb that says: “What cat saw and quietly closed its eyes, dog did not see even its shadow before it started barking ‘hooo’-‘hooo’-hooo’!”

Since Ghana embarked on its democratic dispensation of the 1992 Republican Constitution I have been monitoring, observing and watching the attitude, behavior and comportment of Honourable members of Ghana’s Parliament.

Thanks to the Daily Graphic for its opinion column where everybody is free to give his or her views I also want to express my opinion at this moment free of comment. As I was saying, the first term of Parliament under the 1992 Constitution, which took off on 7th  January 1993, there was not opposition in the House.  Why, the then leading opposition NPP boycotted the parliamentary election after the presidential one and wrote a book entitled ‘The Stolen Verdict’.

Consequently, the opposition outside parliament christened the first term of NDC1 (1993-1996) Parliament under the ‘speakership’ of the Right Honourable Mr. Justice D.F. Annan as ‘rubber stamp parliament’. Period! At that time it was the Ghanaian media that took the mantle of opposition to check government in power. In fat, the then Ghanaian media both public and private did a yeoman’s job. They were fair and balanced in their   reportage. They were analytical  and critical in their criticisms but not abusive and insulting or unprofessional as is the order of the day with some media institutions today.

In 2000 when NPP won the Presidential and Parliamentary elections and NDC became opposition in Parliament (2001-2008) the attitude, behavior and comportment of some minority members in the House became questionable. Sometimes, when President John Agyekum Kufuor went to deliver the State of  the Nation Address in Parliament he was booed and jeered. The then minority in Parliament did not accord due respect to the President of the Republic. Thus, their attitude towards President Kufuor was condemned by all fair-minded people of society both home and abroad.

But then in 2008 when the NDC won general elections and President John Evans Atta Mills of blessed memory became President the opposition NPP in Parliament hit below the democratic belt. For three-and-half years or so ((January 2009- July 2012) when President Mills ruled the country, majority of the minority NPP members in Parliament demonstrated little decorum towards the learned Professor.

In fact, if in 50 years the audio/visual documentary of the attitude, behavior and comportment of NPP Parliamentarians towards President Mills are played back to their grand children they would drop their jaws like a yam in disbelief. To the extent that the very last Sate of the Nation Address presented by President Mills before his transition, he noted” I knew I would be heckled, but I did not know it would so gargantuan.”  But some other things that the minority members of parliament did towards President John Mahama when he took over from the late President Mills could not be reprinted in an article of this nature. Just to mention that ‘dressing in red and black funeral cloths with some mind-boggling inscriptions, as well as flashing red cards in the face of a President in Parliament’ and so on were un-parliamentary to say the least.

Even in our own traditional customs and norms, which some so-called civilized people may prefer to describe as primitive, no village chief let alone a paramount chief from North to South or East to West would be subjected to such democratic humiliation in Parliament of all places.  Of course, some other politicians elsewhere may throw blows or smash their heads with chairs and tables in their legislature. But we in Ghana have our cultural values that do not permit us to look our elders in the face and spit into their eyes, no matter their offences against us.

Commendation

It is against that backdrop that I wish to add my feeble voice to that of many meaningful Ghanaians to commend, praise and salute our honourable members of Parliament. The attitude, behavior and comportment they put up on Thursday, 26 February 2015 when President Mahama presented this year’s State of the Nation Address to the august House.

As the President used the analogy of the Ghana Black Stars to illustrate the resilience of the Ghanaian, our honourable members of Parliament especially the minority in opposition have proved beyond doubt that a Ghanaian is a Ghanaian! Their resolve to show respect to the Head of State and Commander –in- Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Ghana was outstanding despite our collective karma of  ‘dum-sor-dum-sor syndrome!’

Our noble Parliamentarians have proved that they are the symbol of national role models to the youth of Ghana. If I were to be somebody, but I am nobody now, I would have recommended that the entire Parliament of Ghana 2015 should be awarded en-block a Nobel Prize in Attitudinal and Behavioral Change of the 21^st Century!

The writer works with the Information Services Department in Accra. <abissath@gmail.com>