The ”Removal” Malaprop On Ofori Atta
The emotional excess interpreting the alleged ”removal” of Ghana’s Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta is probably misplaced. Given the numerous calls on the president to replace him, the hysteria that greeted this peculiar case in the February 14 cabinet reshuffle is understandable. That is what turned the eyeballs.
The use of the word ”removal” to describe his replacement as Ghana’s Finance Minister drifts to the realms of malapropism for the inappropriateness of the descriptive word. The outgone Finance minister has a new appointment which in Ghana is unofficially known as the prime minister. Ken Ofori-Atta is now a senior presidential advisor on the economy which places his role above the new Finance Minister, Dr Mohammed Amin.
The trite title of Senior Presidential Advisor or Senior Minister is the initiative of the New Patriotic Party whose antecedents from 1969 operated the prime ministerial role with a ceremonial president.
In between the two political regimes referred to in this report, the elevated role recently prefixed with the adjective ”senior,” had been adopted by the longest-reigning military cum civilian government of the PNDC/NDC which created the position ”Presidential Advisor on Governmental Affairs.” A position occupied by Mr. P.V Obeng and Alhaji Mahama Iddrissu before their government bowed out in 2001.
The nuanced titling of any position above the minister but below the president and the vice president is because Ghana does not operate the parliamentary system in which the Majority Leader in the Legislature is the Prime Minister.
Mr. Ken Ofori Atta assumed more powers in the homestretch of looming elections. With his new role, he can give broad directives as to how the Ministry of Finance may operate, this is not to say that he would interfere in day-to-day operations. The addition to his new portfolio ”Envoy on International Investments” still places him in the obtrusive space. Ken Ofori Atta has not been removed but reshuffled and elevated to continue to offer his services to the State.