Folks, Akufo-Addo said nothing new to solve the credibility problems facing his administration in respect of the obnoxious agreement with the United States that has angered Ghanaians except those seeing things the way he does.
And his speech inflamed passions more than dousing the fire. Casting insinuations/aspersions, making hollow declarations, and intensifying the promises to secure Ghana are the highlights.
Unacceptable! The agitations will persist.
Akufo-Addo doesn’t know what angers Ghanaians and is deceiving himself that this kind of empty speech will solve the problem. It won’t. The indecent haste with which the NPP Majority in Parliament ratified that obnoxious agreement is one cause of public anger. Then, the manner in which the government is handling the matter is another.
Is this Government made up of intelligent people at all? If it were so, it shouldn’t be difficult for them to know how to approach the matter. The agreement was put in the public domain for us all to read and respond to. We know its terms are not in Ghana’s interests, which explains the pent-up white-hot anger.
One expected Akufo-Addo to do something intelligent, even as he reiterates the claim that the US had previously signed a similar agreement under the rule of Rawlings and Mahama. So far, we haven’t seen any agreement between Ghana and the US that Rawlings and Mahama endorsed and implemented on the quiet.
Why can’t the Government release such expired agreements for us to read, analyze, and make comparisons with them and what Akufo-Addo has accepted but Ghanaians rejected?
Beyond the empty and big grammar, what will Akufo-Addo do to solve this problem, that is, if he even considers the massive public outcry as a problem to lose sleep over?
Again, on the basis of the justification given by the US ambassador that the monetary concession of 20 million Dollars from the US to Ghana was a huge benefit, can Akufo-Addo tell us how much the US paid Ghana via the agreement with Rawlings and Mahama, respectively?
So far, we haven’t heard anything to that effect. Did Rawlings and Mahama give the US a blank cheque in those agreements without any benefit to Ghana? What were the terms of those agreements? Just release the official documents for us to scrutinize. How difficult should that be? Or Rawlings and Mahama burnt those documents before leaving office?
How come that the Akufo-Addo government will tell us to accept its version of the agreement, obnoxious as it is, without citing the monetary incentive that might make the previous agreements sail through and not its own?
Did the US pay anything to Ghana in the agreements that it contracted with Rawlings and Mahama? Let the government publish the Rawlings and Mahama versions of the agreement. We are intelligent enough to make meaning out of what we will read. Till then, folks, let the agitations continue!!
Why did Akufo-Addo speak to the “nation”, though? Apparently because his back has been pushed to the wall. His government thought it could cut corners to do things as it wished only to be caught wrong-footed and pants down, which unnerved it.
Let me be clear upfront here to say that the overwhelming public uproar against the obnoxious pact with the US was least expected by it. That it immediately provoked so much vitriolic reaction scared it. Why? Clearly because the government has still not been able to differentiate between its viability in terms of how it propagated itself through its favoured strategies for political jingoism in the electioneering campaign period and the specific goal-oriented manouevres for fulfilling the campaign promises after winning the elections.
It is still fixated on doing what Justice Atuguba derided as “rally ground talk” as if it is still searching for political power, meaning that it’s still unable to know the difference between seeking political power through rhetoric and using that power that it won in 2016 to outdo its predecessors. Very ridiculous and pathetic in the sense of their high-falutin claim as Ghana’s “interrectuals”.
Thus, the government’s exposure as being caught up in its own web of lies, deception, over-bloated sense of personal worth (just because its functionaries claim to be successful technocrats, professional lawyers, engineers, accountants, and what-not). What we are seeing now is no surprise to some of us monitoring this camp and praying for this moment.
Nowhere in the NPP’s manifesto on Ghana’s foreign policy was there any room for this kind of agreement with the US that has touched raw nerves to trigger massive opposition against Team Akufo-Addo. So, why spring this surprise on Ghanaians? Just for 20 million Dollars?
Folks, let me say here that Akufo-Addo had to address the nation because he has little support from his own political camp. The NPP’s communicators are themselves torn apart. They don’t know what to hang on to in any effort to defend the government. And they have said little or nothing, contrary to their hitherto vociferous defence of everything propping up Akufo-Addo.
What for Akufo-Addo to do? Take up the mantle to spill it all. In doing so, though, he flopped, as is evidently clear from public reaction to his emotion-packed delivery. The inference, then, is that Akufo-Addo didn’t get the backing from his own camp and has had to tackle the bull by its horn, but he went for the tail instead. Too bad. Now that the stiff opposition has surprisingly roped in the pro-NPP rag-tag group called “Occupy Ghana”, Akufo-Addo’s hot air seems to poised against him instead of burning his critics. (See https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/OccupyGhana-criticises-government-for-speedy-passage-of-military-agreement-641799).
Folks, we are just looking for evidence as citizens so we can secure our country’s sovereignty and not stay aloof as irresponsible spectators to cry over spilt milk.
Will Akufo-Addo give us the 1998 and 2015 agreements to curtail all the needless damage control being done by Kweku Baako and the others aggravating the society the more they rush to his defence?
Let Akufo-Addo give us the two previous governments’ agreements and stop fooling around with bogus grammar and nonsensical rhetoric, playing on people’s emotions. Interestingly, the people know him more than he knows himself. Let him be the man that he claims to be; and if he has nothing to hide, let him come clean and not depend on hirelings in the media to defend his misguided moves.
I shall return…
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