Charlotte Osei’s sympathisers still don't get it

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 3, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

In the wake of Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong’s hip-shooting allegation that the Chairperson of the so-called Independent Electoral Commission may have availed herself of her present job by offering sexual favors to President John Dramani Mahama, reams of articles have been written, and are still being written, on both sides of the controversy but largely in support of her as a woman. Almost none of the articles, including one titled “MP’s Allegation Against Charlotte Osei: Reflections within the Context of Gender Equality” MyJoyOnline.com 7/3/16), examines the real issue that provoked the notorious fire-spitting New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Assin-Central into making the admittedly sexist remark attributed to him.

And that issue, of course, regards the deliberately cynical and regressive policy tack or strategy assumed by Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei to seriously jeopardize Ghana’s fledgling but unquestionably robust democratic political culture. And, by the way, I am also wondering how the response might have been if Mrs. Osei had also been identified by her alleged assailant as a lesbian or a transgender person. I have already dealt with the political aspect of the debate in several previous columns and so do not intend to reprise the same here. What is worthy of note, however, is how the overwhelming majority of Mr. Agyapong’s critics, largely members, supporters and sympathizers of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), have conveniently chosen to ignore the legal and constitutional aspect to this matter which could well plunge Ghana into a prolonged and perhaps intractable civil war in less than a year from now.
And it is the fact of the flagrant, to speak much less about the downright criminal, refusal of the Electoral Commissioner to accede to a Supreme Court order to de-register all voters on the country’s Biometric Voters’ Register (BVR) who registered to vote by the use of their National Health Insurance Cards. The Wood Supreme Court has concluded that the NHIS Cards are not a legitimate proof of citizenship documentation. The reason given by the Apex Court for its decision is that a remarkable percentage of non-Ghanaian citizens, both resident in the country and outside, have gained easy access and permanent possession of these health insurance cards. Significantly, however, the Supreme Court did not end its decision on the preceding note. Instead, the justices patiently and meticulously and systematically proceeded to list several of the valid documents which could be used to authentically prove one’s citizenship at any voters’ registration center, namely, birth certificates, driver’s licenses, passports and baptismal certificates. I even suspect that the National Identification Authority (NIA) was authorized to issue proof-of-citizenship IDs.

Anyway, contrary to the expectation of many a staunch adherent of the country’s 1992 Republican Constitution, Mrs. Osei has single-mindedly decided that the latest Supreme Court decision is too elitist and stands the risk of disenfranchising hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of largely the rural underclass and therefore neither she nor any of her Associate Commissioners at the EC would be obligated to carry out the Supreme Court’s order. Naturally, the Mahama Posse and their supporters are deliriously backing Mrs. Osei and their EC surrogates because during the 2012 presidential-election petition proceedings, and shortly thereafter, it came to light – via the meticulous technological sleuthing of Team Bawumia – that the margin of votes that separated then-Interim President Mahama from his most formidable opponent, namely, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the country’s main opposition leader, could be squarely accounted for by the number and/or percentage of non-Ghanaian, as well as underage, citizens who may have used their National Health Insurance Cards as proof-of-citizenship to register to vote.

The Supreme Court, in handing down its decision, had allowed ample time for the de-registered voters who had illegitimately used their NHIS Cards – it was legitimate in the run-up to Election 2012, by the way – to re-register to vote in Election 2016, if they could prove their citizenship by the use of any of the presently approved documents. Characteristically, the response of Mrs. Osei and her EC associates was to thumb their nose at the Supreme Court, once again, with the full-backing of President Mahama, who had earlier on curiously permitted the EC to replace that statutory institution’s Coat-of-Arms with one that had been capriciously and whimsically selected by the EC Chairperson and her associates without the mandated constitutional approval by Parliament or the elected representatives of the people. In essence, the preceding is the most authentic and legitimate context in which this raging controversy and debate ought to be envisaged.

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