In questions of power, let no more he heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from the chains of the constitution.
Thomas Jefferson – Kentucky
Resolutions, 1798
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written in the tablets of eternity.
John Emerich Edward
LET IT NOT BE SAID of Nana Akufo Addo and his team that like Nero fiddling while Rome burnt in the great fire of Rome of AD 64, they looked askance and allowed President Mahama to have his own way to spoil everything on his path to exit; rather, let it be said that they were, as Jesus said to the Twelve Disciples: “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves”, making sure that everything moves smoothly during the transition period.
‘Onaapo’ may have lost its original meaning (you won’t get), but the song has caught on among NPP supporters. It was originally the campaign song for the NDC. Dee Aja had composed it with lyrics that taunted the NPP, its leader and supporters. The NDC was ‘solid’ on the ground, so they surmised and believed in their own imaginations, and as Winston Churchill notes, “…there is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away”. They lingered on, that is, NDC–threw Cabinet men and women on the campaign trail–but insulted the intelligence of the ordinary Ghanaian.
Ghanaians had not forgotten the agonies they had gone through these eight years, so all those campaign messages were too little too late–they only added salt to injury. They were punished – in misery and ignominy.
Then, Barima Sydney came with ‘Onaapo Remix’: John 3:16 (NDC campaign motto) suited NPP: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” “For God so loved Ghana, that he gave Akuffo Addo…” It was time for Mahama to say adieu… “time aso, bye-bye Mahama, twaso” John came to prepare the way for Nana, and the jinx of the Johns in our contemporary politics was broken.
Sidney may not have heard “John 3:16″ by Keith Uriban who had remarked that.”… I learnt everything I needed to know from John Cougar, and John Deere”. But that pop song contained lyrics which says: “And I am a child of a backseat freedom fighter, baptized by rock and roll… never grow up, never grow old.”
Newton’s law of classical mechanics, ‘The Law of Motion’, states that: “For every action, there must be an equal but opposite reaction”- if you throw a ball at the wall with velocity ‘v’ so that momentum is ‘mv’, it will bounce back with momentum ‘-mv’; the momentum is changed ‘2mv’ and it is balanced by the change in momentum of molecules in the wall.
Before the Presidential (Transition) Act, 2012 (Act 845), there had not been any legal blueprint that governed the transition of political power in the country. This Act has even been amended, Presidential Transition (Amendment) Bill, 2016. So we are progressing, developing our political system. So that whatever Presidents did in the past cannot be used to justify whatever the current President is doing. So, if a former President signed an appointment letter for someone a day before he handed over to a new President, that could be understood and explained away that there was no appointment, and in that lacuna, the option was his.
Now, there is a law, and the President must be bound “down from mischief” by the very law he has promulgated. Or are we being told that the Council of State did not give the President advice or that the Council of State’s advice was not sought, because as Mahama says, he could only take advice from those who have held Presidential Office before!
In a word, some of us stick our necks out to say the ‘last-ditch’ appointments of heads of NCCE and CHRAJ are things done in bad faith. It will have been honourable for the President to leave office ‘quietly’ rather than wade into such an unnecessary controversial act. The officers he has appointed could, on their own merit, deservedly secure the appointments. NPP cannot be as cruel as NDC which just gave instructions for people to take a ‘long leave’ from their offices without being assigned any new schedule. Meanwhile, they had the guts to ‘extend’ other people’s mandate even when they had reached the statutory compulsory retiring age of 60!
Question: Was Charlotte Osei not ‘transferred’ from NCCE to the EC? Can’t a President ‘transfer’ her from EC to say, State Transport Company (without demeaning State Transport Company). Or can’t the new persons be transferred from NCCE and CHRAJ to other offices. That will be testing the law and exposing the NPP to unnecesary legal tussle. You see, law goes parri-passu with morality, for after all, morality is ethical justification for law that also facilitates the obedience to the law. Morality is objective. Moral standards are immutable while law is changeable.
In Aparthied South Africa, every move to suppress the blacks was supported by law: the Bantu Education Act with separate education systems for blacks and whites; the Pass Laws, by which blacks had to carry ‘passes’; the Mines and Works Act restricting blacks to certain jobs; the Separate Amenities Act separating the use of certain facilities; Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, prohibiting the marriage between blacks and whites..
There was this recent case which the Court of Appeal in South Africa judged that the term ‘Kaffir’ was “… in our racist past used to hurt, humiliate, denigrate and dehumanise Africans. This obnoxious word caused untold sorrow and pain to the feelings and dignity of the African people of this country.”
Even in our own country, the Preventive Detention Act which ensured that Dr. Nkrumah’s ‘one party state’ succeeded, was considered by political observers as obnoxious and opprobrious, despite the fact that those whose parents or relations never suffered the imprisonment and other indignities under it, refer to its legitimacy. Yes, the law at the time permitted it, Parliament had passed it, but what was its moral justification? Kweku Baako does not see eye to eye with his literary friend, I.K. Gyasi on the comparison of the South African examples. And both of them are ‘free thinkers’. Baako thinks the President has the authority to make new appointments and perform other Presidential acts; Gyasi cautions moderation, and Elizabeth Ohene advises Mahama: “A dignified exit is far more attractive and cheaper than the loud, clumsy one the President is currently negotiating”. Me? Speech is silvern, silence is golden.