“Being a friend of women in general, I wouldn’t really be too bothered if these First Ladies received “something small” to support their micro political mobilizations on behalf of their husbands. In which case I would be opposed to such a pressing national matter being smuggled through the infamous emoluments committee.”
The proposition, recommending among others, that wives and in some cases concubines of Ghanaian presidents should henceforth enjoy state largesse in the form of salaries and personal incomes has received a landslide uproar, causing the current First and Second Ladies to reject the lucrative deal for good.
Being a friend of women in general, I wouldn’t really be too bothered if these first ladies received “something small” to support their micro political mobilizations on behalf of their husbands. In which case, I would be opposed to such a pressing national matter being smuggled through the infamous emoluments committee.
You see, emolument committees, by their constitution and design are a lottery apparatus, a pay- day harvest to every president. Presidents past and present, dead and alive, hide behind these emolument engineers (who they carefully handpick and even possibly choreograph) to sing the master’s song.
Emolument Committees have unassailable privileges and powers of recommendation equal to no one in this country. Indeed, whatever they recommend has 99.9 percent chance of survival. This small group of mighty men and women, full of learning and professional acumen have always gone against the grain of public opinion in their recommendations, which constantly proposes a panoply of juicy financial rewards for elected officials!
This Committee, like many others before it, appear to be taking the suffering commoners of this country for a jolly ride. How could they be so oblivious of the rapacious consternation such a recommendation was likely to provoke among the voiceless ordinary people of this country?
Previous committees on presidential emoluments have had to nurse deep scratches and bruises on their faces from the voiceless ordinary people of Ghana for similar provocative recommendations that unilaterally imposed deeply vexatious, high maintenance executive privileges on a poor country such as ours.
Such constitutional, elitist ingratiation of officialdom at the expense of the struggling ordinary men and women of this country is nauseating, to say the least. The First and Second Ladies already receive a sizeable allowance from the state, in addition to enjoying unbelievably overwhelming freebies of state by virtue of their relationship with the president.
The president pays no bills, whether electricity, medical, rent, water or any of the things most of us struggle to accomplish. His kitchen is state branded, from tomatoes to salt. There is no limit to the number of household dependents or visitors he may invite to dinner. Indeed, but for political mobilization normally in support of her husband, the First Lady’s role should be mainly figurative, stately, ceremonial, devoid of open partisanship and divisive politics.
Unfortunately, since the days of Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, our First Ladies have led the feminine political wing of their parties themselves, using their soft skills to engage in political mobilization towards Election Day.
This matter should be properly tabled before Parliament and thoroughly discussed openly for redress. As for the engineers who sit behind closed doors to throttle us with these “scratch my back vices,” we would need to overthrow their immeasurable power by constitutional reforms, otherwise, the day will come when they would mortgage us all to satisfy the whims of a Trump!
