IT WAS instructive to watch the group that calls itself the ‘Majority Caucus’ in Parliament address a press conference the other day, to request the President to get rid of some members of his Cabinet.
Their reason for the request was that those Cabinet members had contributed to the worsening of the economy. And so on and so forth.
I commend the Parliamentary group for having had the courage to bring into the open, concerns which they had probably expressed before, to the Executive, in one way or the other.
By the way, “backbench revolts” of the type exhibited at the press conference, are not at all a new thing. They occur even in countries whose administrations come under the rubric of “totalitarian rule”. As for democracies, the evidence is quite simply overwhelming. Why, in Great Britain, we recently saw the ‘crowning’ and booting-out of whole Prime Ministers, not just ministers! Fail to inspire confidence on the backbenches, and you’re a goner.
I am, however, not quite overwhelmed with praise for the Ghana “Majority Caucus” for the way they have acted. The trouble is that, in my opinion, we have been sitting down and watching a far greater crisis evolve before our very eyes, than the one represented by our need to go to the IMF for balance of payments support and/or help with debt relief.
Yes, the economic crisis is in need of urgent and quick resolution. But remember that in Great Britain (for instance), we once had a Prime Minister who was so enraged by what foreign speculators were doing to his country’s economy that he coined an unflattering name for them that has stayed in the language: “the gnomes of Zurich!” The name has stuck, for that type of operation never ends.
On the other hand, what galamsey is doling to Ghana is conceivably unprecedented anywhere else in the world. Yes, there is serious devastation in the Amazon valley Brazil. But the water sources there are not as threatened as those in Ghana compared to the anarchy in the coca-growing areas of Colombia (to be sure). But cocaine does not threaten the total environment there, as it does in the farmlands dotted around the Ankobrah River, the Offin, Oti, the Pra, the Tano, the Birim, and the Densu, for instance.
I ask our MPs: When did you last ask for the head of a minister because forest reserves and water bodies were being destroyed with impunity before your very.? We shall go to the IMF and come back, with a structural adjustment programme in our pockets (or not, as the case may be!) but where can we get another Ankobrah or Birim?
In other words, where lie our priorities? Now, that is not an idle question. Perhaps, if our MPs had – collectively — shown as much concern over the visibly atrocious destruction inflicted upon our water-bodies, and severely punished those responsible, they would have driven some fear into the hearts and minds of the economic managers, too, and thereby saved the Cedi by default?
They did pass the Mines and Minerals Amendment (Act 995). Yes. But have they followed it up? How many questions have the asked in Parliament about the failure of the Executive to prosecute any galamsey operators under Act 995?
By the way, why was there so little publicity about the passing into law of Act 995? As far as I know, there was no report IN THE MEDIA about the DEBATE ON THE BILL! All we heard was from the President (when he informed the Council of State that such an Act had received the “Assent” from him!”
(By the way, if you want to find out more about the strange circumstances that surround the passing of Act 995, try and retrieve the debate on it in the Hansard Reports on the Internet!).
I see that the Minority caucus has also advertised a “motion of censure” to be moved against the same two ministers targeted by the majority caucus. My message to them is the same as the one to the majority, namely, “Please don’t be so selective about the issues relating to the economic welfare of Ghana that you take seriously. For you are charged with responsibility for no less a commodity than – THE FUTURE OF THE NATION OF GHANA!
It’s the only nation we’ve got!
By Cameron Duodu