With less than two months to a general election, the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia/New Patriotic Party administration has
achieved the unthinkable; they have managed to become the Minority Party in parliament.
From an incredible and unassailable high of one hundred and sixty-nine (169) parliamentary seats won with blood,
sweat and tears, the trio of Akufo-Addo/Bawumia/NPP has managed to become the Minority with a miserly 135
seats.
And not a single vote has been cast yet in the December 7 th general elections, which is seven weeks away.
Mr. Akufo-Addo yesterday achieved the dubious honour of being the first President in Ghana’s history who would
have to seek the direct and required assistance of the opposition Leader in parliament before he can get any business
done in parliament.
This is the same man Akufo-Addo’s government was trying to jail, a few weeks ago.
Maybe Ghana is lucky to have a Presidential System of government. If this had been a Parliamentary System, the
NPP would have faced, and lost a vote of no-confidence in parliament yesterday. And Ato Cassiel Hayford, who
irresponsibly signed away millions of Ghana’s hard-earned foreign exchange, would be Prime Minister.
This is where arrogance, bad planning, patronage instead of competence and one man behaving as if he alone won
an election, gets you.
There was a significant shift of power in Parliament yesterday as the National Democratic Congress (NDC),
formerly the Minority Caucus, now became the Majority Caucus in the House.
This shift follows the declaration of four parliamentary seats vacant by the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, on
the floor of the House on Thursday, October 17.
The declaration came after a heated debate in Parliament, sparked by a petition filed by former NDC Minority
Leader, Haruna Iddrisu.
As a result, the Speaker ruled that three seats held by New Patriotic Party (NPP) members and one seat held by an
NDC member were vacant.
The legislators affected by the ruling are the NDC's Peter Yaw Kwakye Ackah of Amenfi Central constituency,
Andrew Amoakoh Asiamah of Fomena, Kojo Asante, NPP MP for Suhum in the Eastern Region, and NPP's Cynthia
Morrison of Agona West constituency.
The Speaker also noted that once the notice of polls had duly confirmed that the four MPs were going independent,
they had no business to remain as MPs in the current parliament.
This ruling means that Ghana’s hung parliament, which had previously given the governing NPP a slight advantage
as the Majority side of the House with the support of Andrew Amoako Asiamah, an Independent Member of
Parliament, will now tilt toward the opposition NDC.
As it stands, the NDC holds 136 parliamentary seats, making them the majority of the House while the NPP controls
135 seats.
BACKGROUND
Seven years ago, the NPP held a clear and undisputed Majority in parliament, with 169 seats. In the four years after
2016, the Akufo-Addo government led a direct policy of impoverishing the party’s members of parliament, playing
favourtism in local primaries, and pursued a policy that Mr. Akufo-Addo should retire in 2024 with the set of MPs
he came to power with.
This ideological and policy incoherence lost Mr. Akufo-Addo 33 parliamentary seats by end of 2020, and he barely
scrapped by maintaining his own seat. Many suggest that he lost the Presidency but clawed it back through rigging.
In the end, the party had to go begging people like Andrew Amoako Asiamah, a victim of Mr. Akufo-Addo, to
maintain a semblance of ‘majority’.
NO LESSONS LEARNT
But the bitter lessons were not learned from the mistakes of pre-202 general elections. Ahead of the 2024 general
election, the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia/NPP trio has played the same woeful game, with regional and national
executive taking bribes to choose who won and who lost parliamentary primaries.
The consequence is what gave birth in parliament yesterday, a ruling government in opposition in parliament.
One could say that what would happen in December, is almost a formality.
