Parliament not centre of English excellence but rebukes Blakk Rasta

Members of Parliament (MPs) are elected to represent their constituents and not to award marks for the English spoken during deliberations in the House, the Speaker of Parliament, Mr Edward Doe Adjaho, has said.

Mr Adjaho, who stated this when he rebuked a former radio presenter, Abubakar Ahmed, popularly known as Blakk Rasta, when he appeared before the Bar of Parliament last Friday, did not elaborate further, but his statement was believed to be in reaction to the humorous anecdotes made about grammatical errors made by the MP for Adentan, Mr Emmanuel Nii Ashie Moore, when the radio presenter appeared before the Privileges Committee of Parliament last month.

Mr Moore had said "Did you spoke....?" instead of "Did you speak.....?" and "Did you attributed...?" instead of "Did you attribute...?" when he posed questions to Mr Ken Kuranchie, the Editor of the Searchlight, the newspaper which had carried the contemptuous statement made by Blakk Rasta.

Some radio stations, for sometime, played the Adentan MP’s voice to provoke laughter.

Mr Moore, according to sources in Parliament, tried unsuccessfully to get Mr Adjaho to intervene to stop the media from poking fun at him.

Mr Adjaho's comment

Since Mr Moore made those grammatical blunders, his political opponents in the Adentan Constituency have sought to make capital out of it.

For example, a billboard has been erected in the constituency with the inscription: "You can continue to spoke but in 2016, the people of Adentan will speak."

Mr Moore, since being elected to the House, has had difficulty expressing himself.

In 2014, he sought to know from the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing when the acute water shortage at Adentan would be solved.

His question read: "I want to know from the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing when the acute water shortage endured by the people of Adentan would be solved.”

But he failed to pronounce "endured" correctly and Mr Adjaho asked him to repeat the question.

He proceeded to pronounce "endured" as "endoyed", provoking laughter from the Minority side of the House.

Bar of Parliament

Earlier, Blakk Rasta had appeared before the Bar of Parliament to purge himself of the contemptuous statement he made to the effect that 80 per cent of MPs smoked weed.

"Mr Speaker, I am very sorry for what I said. I apologise to this House. As I was seated in the Public Gallery, I was crying in my stomach for wasting everybody's time, especially members of this august House," he said, among other things.

He said if he were to receive a slap each from MPs for the contemptuous statement, he would willingly do so.

He appeared at the bar of the House following recommendations made to that effect by the Privileges Committee of Parliament after he had appeared before it on June 25, 2015 to answer contempt charges.

Another contemnor, Prof. Alex Dodoo, was discharged by the House after it held that he had shown remorse and not only apologised when he appeared before the committee but also did so through the various media he had used to commit contempt.

First in Ghana's history

The Privileges Committee, chaired by the Second Deputy Speaker, Mr Ebo Barton-Odro, had recommended that Blakk Rasta be made to appear before the Bar and apologise after being reprimanded.

It is the first time in the history of the country that anybody has appeared before the Bar of Parliament to be reprimanded and to purge himself of contempt.

Although the recommendations of the committee were adopted, some members of the House were not pleased.

The MP for Abuakwa South, Mr Atta Akyea, was of the view that reprimanding Blakk Rasta and asking him to appear before the Bar to purge himself of contempt charges was not punitive enough.

He said a stiffer punishment should be meted out to the musician to serve as a deterrent.

"Reprimanding him and asking him to go and sin no more cannot be the intendment of the law," he said, and suggested that a jail term for Blakk Rasta would have been more appropriate.

"We are not a footnote to this democratic dispensation. We cannot be the end of their jokes," he said, in reference to the contemptuous statements made by the former radio presenter.

But at the end of it all, it was the voice of the majority of the members of the committee that carried the day.

Speaker's reprimand

Mr Adjaho, while reprimanding Blakk Rasta, said his statement accusing MPs of smoking marijuana was an affront to the dignity of the House.

He said the House had "always been with the media" and that was why the Criminal Libel Law, which sought to criminalise free speech, was repealed.

Mr Adjaho said he was and had always been a friend of the media because "when you take the media out of the democratic dispensation, the country is doomed".

He said before Blakk Rasta made the contemptuous statement, he (the Speaker) was a fan of his but that he had ceased to be after Blakk Rasta had brought the image of the House into disrepute.

"We have accepted your apology but we shall be watching you. I hope this is the first and the last time you make statements that undermine the dignity of the House. Go and sin no more," he said.

Contributions

The Majority Leader, Mr Alban S.K. Bagbin, served notice that henceforth Parliament would "crack the whip".
That move, he said, was important to "save democracy".

The Nadowli/Kaleo MP said Parliament had the power to punish, regulate its own conduct, arrest its own members, among many others, and advised those who questioned the powers the House had to exact punishment to educate themselves before making those comments.

He stated that if the dignity of Parliament was undermined, democracy was, in effect, sabotaged.

“They say the pen is mightier that the sword. But the pen is worse than the sword. This House will no longer shirk its responsibility. The honeymoon is over," he added.

The Minority Leader, Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, said what was more annoying was the "triumphantilism" that Blakk Rasta displayed when he appeared before the Privileges Committee.

"I do not know what he sought to display to the people of this country," he said, adding, "After the event, he went back to square one to let people know that he was a champion.”

He said articles 122 and 123 of the 1992 Constitution, as well as Standing Order 30 of Parliament, clothed the House with enormous powers to deal with anybody who made contemptuous statements about the House.

"Today's event should mark a watershed and from today onwards should anyone do a similar thing, not only will we haul him before the Committee; we will also let the law take its course," he cautioned.