It Will Be Unwise For The Hon Alban Bagbin To Become 2nd Deputy Speaker In The Next Parliament - For It Is A Mug's Game In A Ghana Dominated By The NPP

It is reported that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) minority caucus in the next Parliament has apparently agreed with the majority caucus that the Hon Alban Bagbin should be selected to become the 2nd deputy speaker of the House.

If true, it would be a terrible tragedy for Ghanaian democracy - as the minority side in Parliament needs an effective leader at this critical juncture of Ghana's history.

We must prevent the occurence of tyranny of the majority in our homeland Ghana - a very real possibility we must never discount - at all costs after 7th January, 2017. The Hon Bagbin can help ensure that with his extensive parliamentary experience.

It would appear that the clever folk at the presidency, who tried to destroy the Hon Bagbin, by undermining him at the constituency level so he would lose his seat during the election campaign, have found a perfect way to move him out of the NDC's leadership for good.

They are resorting to flattery and fanning his ego - in the hope that vanity will work for them where untramelled power and impunity failed during the election campaign.

In my humble view, an  NDC heading for the political wilderness, after midnight, 6th January, 2017, will be extremely foolish to allow Bagbin to be prevented from leading the Minority in Parliament, through a damning-through-flattery-promotion to end up as 2nd deputy speaker of Parliament.

In the political wilderness his party needs his leadership skills now more than ever. So does his partly-apprehensive nation.

One certainly hopes that the Hon Bagbin will see through this latest ploy to destroy him politically.

One hopes that he does not make the same strategic error of judgement he made in accepting to be moved by Mills' hatchet men from being Majority Leader in Parliament to head the ministry of water resources, works and housing.

It did him no good then - and this 'promotion' will do him no good at all either. It is a dead-end politically.

Let him rather take a long-term view and hold on to the relatively more powerful political position of Minority Leader in Parliament  - and exert a calming influence on the party's grassroots and the nation as a whole that way.

After all, one day he will end up as Speaker, if that is what he actually wants to be his public service legacy - if the NDC  succeeds in returning to power again with a parliamentary majority.

By refusing to accept the position of 2nd deputy speaker, he will prevent those 'genuises' at the presidency responsible for the party's humiliating  election defeat, from finally sticking the long and sharp double-edged knife in his back - as they head for oblivion.

With the benefit of hindsight, I am pretty  sure that he knows perfectly well that I was right to counsel against his accepting the ministerial appointment, which  removed him from the leadership of the House, during President Mills' tenure.

With respect - and I say this only as a matter-of-fact and with great humility because I still think of him as a dear brother and friend - I am also right in this instance too.

For the good of the NDC, and for his own good, let him rather become Minority Leader in the next Parliament. With respect, being 2nd deputy speaker in a Parliament dominated by a crafty New Patriotic Party (NPP) majority side is a mug's game, alas.