It was Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, acting with the reprehensible connivance of his Anlo-Ewe clansmen, The Tsikata Brothers, to be precise, and the rest of the goon-squad of reprobate hangers-on, who set the precedent of legitimizing the stealing of state-owned real-estate and other landed properties. And so it is insufferably absurd for Mr. Kofi Adams, the National Organizer of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), to accuse the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) of betraying the criminal scofflaw that is former President John Dramani Mahama
First of all, the Presidential Transition Act makes it patently clear that upon the end of their tenures, both the lame-duck, or outgoing, President and his Vice have to promptly, if not immediately, vacate their state-owned bungalows or residences in order to timeously make way for the leaders of the incoming administration.
Therefore, it was ultra-vires, or totally out of bounds or order, for then-President John Dramani Mahama to casually presume that he could ride roughshod over the laws of the land, by illegally insisting on keeping his official residence as part of his retirement package. We must also, once again, point out the fact that Mr. Mahama was not the very first Vice-President to have occupied the state-owned bungalow in question, which was first earmarked as the official home of all Vice-Presidents in 2001, or thereabouts, with the inauguration of the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party government.
As I have already noted in several previous columns, the first Vice-President to occupy the bungalow in question was the late Vice-President Aliu Mahama, who occupied the same bungalow for 8 years, because he served 2 terms in office as Vice-President of Ghana.
Mr. John Mahama, on the other hand, only served one term as Vice-President of Ghana when, in the wake of the passing of then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, he had to step in as Interim-President of Ghana. Actually, by July 24, 2012 when he transitioned into history, or “The Ages,” as President Barack H. Obama once put it during a eulogy presentation at the funeral of South Africa’s President Nelson R. Mandela, Mr. John Mahama had been living in his official residence as Vice-President of Ghana for roughly three-and-half years.
It goes without saying that upon his assumption of office as the substantive President of Ghana, on January 7, 2013, Mr. Mahama ought to have promptly moved into the Jubilee-Flagstaff House and ceded his bungalow to his Vice-President, Mr. Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur. Instead, the newly elected President John Dramani Mahama chose to cavalierly ride roughshod over the laws of the land by choosing to illegally squat in his old official residence for another 4 years!
It well appears that Mr. Mahama believed that flouting the laid-down laws of the land, regarding the occupancy of the official Vice-Presidents’ residence long enough, would automatically legitimize such flagrant illegality at some point in time. Which was why he mustered the chutzpah to request to be allowed to keep the bungalow as part of his retirement package, even when the Presidential Transition Act clearly stated that he had absolutely no right to doing so.
You see, what we are talking about here are legal principles of the sort that differentiate a civilized state from the sylvan Darwinian principles of the Hobbesian State of Nature, which the former President Mahama would have the rest of the nation gratuitously concede him, while the rest of us obeyed a different set of principles and laws.
In another era, not in the distant past, Mr. Mahama would have been tied to a stake and summarily executed by his own former boss and former Supreme Commander of Scofflaws, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings. And he would rather have been the one accused of having betrayed the nation, and not President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
I hope Mr. Kofi Adams, the National Democratic Congress’ National Organizer, is capable of basic logical reasoning.
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
Join GhanaStar.com to receive daily email alerts of breaking news in Ghana. GhanaStar.com is your source for all Ghana News. Get the latest Ghana news, breaking news, sports, politics, entertainment and more about Ghana, Africa and beyond.
