By Nana Antwi Boasiako Barimah
After the muddled display of unparliamentary acts by our MPs on the twilight of the 7th Parliament and the Ushering in of the 8th Parliament. I felt exceedingly ashamed as a patriotic Ghanaian especially when the creators of the law who ought to know better deliberately metamorphosed into political cannibals and devoured the same laws they enacted.
In spite of these shameful developments in the chamber, I restrained myself to be a mere bystander not to pen down any piece on the subject matter.
However, upon a second thought, I realized it would be a complete waste of my precious intellectual energy if I fail to subject the vicious actions of our MPs to academic and intellectual scrutiny and to constructively critique the same appropriately.
The beauty of our highly emulative democracy was slaughtered on the altar of partisanship and pettiness.
I don’t see such dishonorable acts being applied in any serious parliamentary jurisdiction.
These shameful acts by our MPs is a locus classicus of Parliamentary Rascalism which is very alien to the parliamentary culture we have practiced since the advent of the 4th republican dispensation.
It’s clearly obvious some parliamentarians possess ‘arsonic’ tendencies and recklessly succeeded in precipitating volcanic flames in the chamber and whose ‘molten magma’ nearly swept away our democratic architecture.
I was completely astonished and enormously bewildered to witness these despicable acts being perpetrated by so-called honourable men and women.
Honourability connotes self-discipline, respect, and decorum which was visibly lacking in our MPs. Hence, our MPs displayed the exact antonym of what Honourable men and women ought to exhibit at all times even in the most extraneous circumstances.
The parliamentarians’ dishonorable actions pose an existential threat to our enviable democracy. With my political lens as I look into the crystal balls, I can prognose that if a suitable antidote is not prescribed using ‘consensus-building’ as the catalyst, then these shameful unparliamentary acts that Ghanaians witnessed on the night is only a microcosm of what is yet to come.
God Bless Our Democracy!!
God Bless Our Homeland Ghana!!!
