{"id":390181,"date":"2018-01-10T05:58:26","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T05:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=390181"},"modified":"2018-01-10T08:56:25","modified_gmt":"2018-01-10T08:56:25","slug":"republic-day-speaker-ignoring-symbolism-of-july-1-mornah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=390181","title":{"rendered":"Republic Day: Speaker missing symbolism of July 1 &#8211; Mornah"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Chairman of the People\u2019s National Convention (PNC), Bernard Mornah, believes the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Mike Ocquaye, is willfully rubbishing Ghana\u2019s history with his call for a change in the date currently observed as Ghana\u2019s Republic Day.<\/p>\n<p>This follows an article from the Speaker arguing that the date should be moved from July 1 to January 7.<\/p>\n<p>[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;MT6LHfOGm8y5fZpU3Gipjku2A8J51Q2y&#8221;]Prof. Ocquaye argued that, technically, the only existing republic is the one referred to as the Fourth Republic, which began on January 7, 1993, with Jerry John Rawlings.<\/p>\n<p>In his view, all other republics are ostensibly\u00a0non-factors because they were overthrown by coup d&#8217;\u00e9tats.<\/p>\n<p>But Mr. Mornah believes Prof. Ocquaye should have more reverence for the symbolism of certain historical moments.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c&#8230;As somebody who is supposed to be a historian, it beats my imagination that he is throwing history to the dustbin because we are celebrating Republic Day for its significance in history. Not because there is a termination or otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have categorized each of them to signify something so that all of us would know that the Republic that we are celebrating today did not just come about,&#8221; Mr. Mornah stated.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_373669\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-373669\" style=\"width: 518px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-373669\" src=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/speaker-parliament-mike-oquaye.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"518\" height=\"330\" srcset=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/speaker-parliament-mike-oquaye.jpg 518w, https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/speaker-parliament-mike-oquaye-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 518px) 100vw, 518px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-373669\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Prof. Aaron Mike Ocquaye<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Prof. Ocquaye, who delivered a controversial Founder\u2019s Day Lecture, urged Ghana to recognize August 4 in Ghana&#8217;s history. That proposal is to be considered, as an executive order has since been given by President Nana Akufo-Addo to effect the change.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Mornah thus described the\u00a0Speaker&#8217;s recent call as his latest attempt to rewrite history, and that &#8220;it is obvious that Prof. Michael Ocquaye in this write-up has not spoken what is supposed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ghana became a republic on July 1, 1960, in what is regarded as the First Republic, marking the attainment of complete political autonomy from the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n<p>The Second Republic came into being in 1969, the third in 1979 before the Fourth Republic in 1993, under the regime of Jerry John Rawlings and the NDC.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By: Delali Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Chairman of the People\u2019s National Convention (PNC), Bernard Mornah, believes the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Mike Ocquaye, is willfully rubbishing Ghana\u2019s history with his call for a change in the date currently observed as Ghana\u2019s Republic Day. This follows an article from the Speaker arguing that the date should be moved from July 1 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":390162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,11],"tags":[9126,3,10017],"class_list":["post-390181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-top-stories","tag-bernard-mornah","tag-ghana-news","tag-prof-mike-ocquaye"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=390181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/390162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=390181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=390181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=390181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}