By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph. D.
The Otiko Djaba confirmation impasse strikingly demonstrates the acute desperation of the minority NDC members on the Parliamentary Appointments Committee (PAC). Needless to say, if anybody has an intimate knowledge of former President John Dramani Mahama, it is definitely not the charlatanic likes of Messrs. Rashid Pelpuo and Haruna Iddrisu.
The former may be grossly mistaken if he thinks that Ghanaians have so soon forgotten that he was abruptly removed by then-President John Evans Atta-Mills from his Sports Minister’s post. Maybe Mr. Pelpuo would do himself great good to let Ghanaians in on why he was so suddenly and unceremoniously bumped off his post, and whether he believes that he has any credibility that qualifies him to make any pontifical pronouncements on the caliber and integrity of Ms. Otiko Afisa Djaba, the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection-Designate (See “NDC Rejects Otiko” Daily Guide / Modernghana.com 2/1/17).
Likewise, Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, the former Labor and Employment Minister, is the last person who ought to be lecturing Ghanaians about the moral integrity of Ms. Djaba. Mr. Iddrisu must not fool himself into thinking and/or believing that Ghanaians have so soon forgotten that he shamelessly plagiarized his way through the composition of his Master’s Thesis in one of the social sciences at the University of Ghana. He almost definitely gained admission to Legon on the questionable basis of Affirmative Action, for it is quite obvious that he does not have what it takes to do intellectual heavy-lifting work at the nation’s oldest and most respected flagship academy.
As to how he became a Labor and Employment Minister continues to boggle my imagination. But that it took the authorities of the University of Ghana some two protracted years to catch onto his flagrant intellectual dishonesty is all the more worrisome. It reflects the abject level of decadence that has stricken the hitherto first-rate quality of the country’s public educational system.
Well, I wasn’t going to take up the matter of how Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei got transferred from the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) to the Electoral Commission (EC), but since the NDC-PAC members have decided to conduct a referendum on Ms. Djaba’s nomination on the impugnation of the Electoral Commission Chair’s chastity a la the public pronouncements of Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, the firebrand New Patriotic Party parliamentarian from Assin-Central, in the Central Region, we have better deal with the issue right here and now.
To be certain, the tenure of the EC Chair was imminently going to be taken up as the subject of a separate column. I personally believe that the post of Electoral Commission Chair is too sensitive and significant to the political culture and destiny of our country to be taken for granted.
Personally, I believe that the tenure of the Electoral Commissioner should be no more than 10 years. But with Ms. Osei’s appointment, even as one constitutional expert pointed out at the time, under absolutely no circumstances, whatsoever, ought she have been transferred from one coordinate and independent commission to another, unless President Mahama had some sinister intentions under his sleeves.
In other words, according to constitutional experts, to protect the administrative integrity and independence of the Heads/Chairs of such cardinal statutory institution as the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) and the Electoral Commission (EC), the last thing that any President or Chief Executive of State should aspire to doing is to play a cynically strategic game of political musical chairs with the appointees of these commissions.
Like the Chief Justice, the heads of these commissions are functionally independent of the presidency. They are also permanent appointees, and not functionally expected to be at the beck and call of the Chief Resident of the Jubilee-Flagstaff House. And this is why those of us who were initially wary of the transfer of Mrs. Osei from her chairwomanship of the NCCE to the EC had good reason to be suspicious.
This is because technically or constitutionally speaking, the two institutions are co-equals; and so fundamentally speaking, Mrs. Osei was not being promoted when she was transferred from the NCCE to the EC. But, of course, we all know that the EC Chair has a functional and/or administrative impact on who becomes President of Ghana in ways that cannot be said of the NCCE chair.
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