Nyaho-Tamakloe Is Not a Serious NPP Member

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

I don't want to be tempted into suggesting that Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe may have been bribed by the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) in exchange for faulting New Patriotic Party (NPP) Members of Parliament for the President's exhibition of gross incompetence in his selection of "inexperienced and mediocre ministers and their deputies in government" (See "Blame NPP MPs for Mediocre Ministers - Nyaho-Tamakloe" MyJoyOnline.com 4/15/13). Unfortunately, this is the most logical conclusion that the critical thinker reaches.

In the rather curious opinion of the former ambassador to Eastern Europe, it is the all-too-legitimate decision of NPP-MPs to boycott the Parliamentary Appointments Committee that induced Mr. Mahama into selecting ministerial misfits for the running of his administration. This assertion is unpardonably preposterous, because there is really a piddling little that NPP-MPs on the aforesaid committee could have done to help an apparently pathologically incompetent Mr. Mahama in selecting better qualified personnel for the cardinal portfolios in his cabinet.

For starters, the duty or privilege of nominating, or selecting, cabinet appointees is squarely the responsibility of the government in power and not the parliamentary minority or members of the opposition. Secondly, it has been the routine for the parliamentary majority, irrespective of ideological suasion, passively taking its marching orders from the Flagstaff House, to summarily vote down any misgivings, or protestations, raised by the parliamentary minority vis-a-vis the qualifications and/or competence of a cabinet appointee.

And so, really, no amount of relevant research on the part of NPP parliamentarians, pointing to the preceding, would have changed the peremptory will of the parliamentary majority and/or the ruling government. Consequently, the suggestion that, somehow, the active participation of NPP-MPs would have remarkably enhanced the caliber of Mr. Mahama's cabinet appointees is simply chimerical or patently absurd.

Thirdly, it is not clear why Dr. Nyaho-Tamakloe would rather legitimize the flagrant fraud that is the Mahama presidency, than staunchly and unreservedly siding with the Akufo-Addo-led petition seeking to allow for the salutary development of an authentic democratic culture in Ghana. Indeed, I am beginning to seriously doubt the trustworthiness of either the loyalty or genuineness of the membership of Dr. Nyaho-Tamakloe in the New Patriotic Party; and I would equally not be surprised if it should shortly turn out that, indeed, the Keta School Boy has been deftly and deviously fronting for the Ewe-dominated National Democratic Congress, in much the same way that Mr. Kpegah and his lackeys have been desperately attempting to character assassinate Nana Akufo-Addo, in a rather pathetic bid to getting the latter to unwisely abandon his presidential ambitions.

I also resent the rather self-righteously asinine suggestion that the NPP-MPs, just like their NDC counterparts, are in parliament first and foremost to represent their constituents and not their party. If this were really the case, then why did Mr. Mahama campaign on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress, rather than as an independent candidate representing the sovereign will of the people?

And then also, why would the NDC, as a political party, join the Akufo-Addo petition instead of allowing Mr. Mahama to respond to the same as an individual with the direct and unmediated mandate of the Ghanaian citizenry at large? It cannot, indeed, be gainsaid that it is prominent New Patriotic Party members like Dr. Nyaho-Tamakloe who are making the country's onward struggle towards a credible democratic political culture considerably more difficult than it ordinarily would be.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
April 15, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.
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