All hail the new legal luminary in town: A letter to Prof. Ransford Gyampo

Dear Prof. Gyampo,

You placed a bet on the wrong horse and when defeat smiled at you, you are unwilling to accept the rules pertaining to this game. Clearly, you were served with an aftereffect you barely anticipated.

The Minority’s indiscretion has hit you cold in the groin as you find same to be beyond the pale. You simply can’t live with the reality of your propositions being ignored and shipped into the dustbin.

Interesting enough, you still do not get the whole E-levy concept, making you run helter-skelter with the view to proving yourself and those you are desperately trying to please that your views are still sacrosanct and hold sway.

Why have you taken this issue so personal like this? What is in this for you? What do you lose if you come to terms with the indisputable fact that you lost in these your rantings and peevish whining over a battle that was won long before it began?

Let me hone in on your latest piece against the happenings in Parliament on Tuesday when the 2022 budget was ultimately and legitimately approved by MPs who have the country at heart and understand the times we find ourselves in.

You, a political scientist who is struggling to convince readers with his political views on happenings in the country, you have metamorphosed into a legal luminary? You are an authority when it comes to the law? You need to be accorded a standing ovation for knowing so much as an academic.

The lawyers who sit in Parliament have used the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana and the standing orders of Parliament to address what nearly became an albatross around our necks, and you are saying they got it wrong by describing same as an absurdity? Wow!

The law is not always common sense. If law is all about common sense, those in that learned profession would not spend inordinately huge sums of monies and many years training to become lawyers. You should get it into your mind that the law, oftentimes, goes deeper than the surface you have scratched.

Even at common sense, you failed with this. Your reason against why Parliament righted the wrong perpetrated by the Bagbin-led team is too hollow to convince many a Ghanaian. Joe Wise is an MP first, a Member of Parliament for the good people of Bekwai, and all other functions he performs are secondary, at best.

There are no ambiguities in the articles and standing orders used to approve the budget. If ‘takashie’ was used to ‘overturn’ what your people did, why don’t you do yourself the honour of going to the Supreme Court or any legal entity to attempt to ‘restore’ your seemingly lost glory.

You are at pains to see this budget passed, reading from your piece. The statement of the budget has been approved and since that did not meet your happy agreement, you are urging the Minority, those you seek to please, to do all they can to block Appropriation? Your wish is to have a rancorous expedition in Parliament beyond the approval of the budget!

You seem to have forgotten that the Majority MPs are 138 whereas your group are 137. Even if every single item is to be subjected to a vote, the Majority would carry the day. Your desire to have the 2022 budget thrown out can be described as a mere pipedream. It will never happen even if your Bagbin returns before daybreak. The ending of your write-up is quite intriguing. You spew poison, pray for doom to hit this administration and turn around to preach for peace! Deep in the dusty recesses of your heart, you know that your number one wish is to see this administration being shown the exit.

Times maybe tough, things might have taken downturns, life is not a bed of roses for Ghanaians (the same scenario plays out across the globe due to Covid-19), things will definitely turn around with the passage of time, and the tragedy you so much pray for the Akufo-Addo administration would be avoided.

P.K. Sarpong, Whispers from the Corridors of the Thinking Place.