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Press Statement
Danquah Institute
February 26, 2011
The
irony of Mills calling for dialogue in Cote D'Ivoire and red
alert in Ghana
The Danquah Institute wishes to register its disappointment with
the intransigent response that the Castle, the Office of the
President, has given to a suggestion from a leading member of
the Opposition that the President should engage its leaders in a
dialogue to seek to address the concerns that have been
catalogued by the 2012 Presidential Candidate of the New
Patriotic Party.
In responding to the suggestion by the Communications Director
of the NPP, Nana Akomea, MP, the President’s men, Alex Segbefia
and Nii Lantey-Vanderpuye, Deputy Chief of Staff and senior
Political Aide to the President, respectively, have both
dismissed the offer of dialogue with the excuse that Nana
Akufo-Addo does not deserve an audience with the President of
the Republic!
In fact, rather than seeing the proposal as a constructive,
responsible gesture on the part of the Opposition to have its
concerns addressed, the Presidency has opted to use that,
superfluously, to flex its muscles. So, one may ask, who then is
the war-monger? This is, certainly, not healthy for our
democracy.
Indeed, Nii Lantey-Vanderpuye went as far as to say, “Nana Addo
is not the President’s equal. He should go and talk to one of
the Ministers, they are his equal.”
We find this posture of arrogance as betraying of the
President’s image as a man of peace and a leader committed to
the unity, peace and wellbeing of the nation. Since when had it
been beneath the dignity of any head of state to meet a citizen
of the nation he had been elected to lead, not least the leader
of the main opposition party who believed he had legitimate
concerns that needed to be addressed?
The position of the Castle reveals a very disturbing attitude of
insincerity. Was it beneath the President when he met members of
the CJA after they raised concerns about the increase in utility
prices?
In fact, meeting leaders from the Opposition in this instance,
as suggested by Nana Akomea, may not be necessary on one
condition: that the concerns that they have been raising since
2009 are being manifestly addressed. The meeting would not have
been necessary if their concerns were being addressed.
However, no clear assurance has come from the Government
regarding resolving those concerns. What they got was rather a
‘red alert’.Even if the red alert by the President was, as
argued by Government officials, an appropriate response to the
leader of the main opposition party putting his supporters on
electoral alert (against intimidation), should the proposal for
dialogue be rebuffed with such absolute contempt from the
Presidency?
We find it sadly hypocritical and contradictory that the same
Commander-in-Chief who is calling for dialogue in a neighbouring
country is pushing, arguably, per his ‘red alert’, for force to
be used against opposition elements in his country who are
calling to their supporters to stand firm and defend themselves.
Should the approach not be on how politicians can make
redundant, by proactive measures and dialogue, the culture of
seeing elections as a battlefield in Ghana?
Why would Ghana’s President call for dialogue in la Cote
d’Ivoire and refuse to engage the Opposition in his own country
in dialogue? Remarkably, we are talking about an opposition
party and its leader that won nearly half of the presidential
votes in 2008, who are determined to meet the ruling party
‘boot-for-boot’.
Meeting journalists on the 7th of January 2011, President John
Evans Atta-Mills called for the use of dialogue instead of
military force to remove Laurent Gbagbo who lost the
presidential election in la Cote d’Ivoire because he “did not
think the military operation would bring peace to the nation.”
Yet, a month and a week later, in his State of the Nation
address on the 17th of February 2011, President Mills, as the
Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces,announced to the
country that he had taken an executive decision to put the
security agencies on ‘Red Alert’. ‘Red Alert’ happens to be the
highest level of alert when an attack by the enemy seems
imminent or more generally a state of alert resulting from
imminent danger.
In justifying his decision to put the nation on security red
alert, President Mills stated, “We will not sit idly by and
allow some persons to throw this country into a state of panic
and chaos just to satisfy their political ambition”.
We have to question why President Mills has departed from his
stance of encouraging dialogue in resolving the crisis in la
Cote d’Ivoire, which as we warned last month, seems to be
degenerating into a civil war, to direct his security agencies
to descend heavily on anyone who raises concerns about attacks
on a critical mass of people in his own country.
It is obvious that the ‘All-Die-be-Die’ message by the 2012
flagbearer of the NPP to his party rank and file necessitated
President Mills’ directive to the security agencies to be on red
alert.
In his response to the President’s address, the leader of the
main opposition party has explained, “The slogan
‘All-Die-be-Die’ came as a result of our [NPP] party activists
being reduced to second class citizens and victims of
vituperations, discrimination, intimidation, aggression and
incarceration without receiving the expected protection from the
state… They know it is not a call on them to initiate violence.
It is a defensive exhortation. It is but a call to the victims
of aggression to stand firm and if need be defend themselves
against the aggressor”.
After providing a catalogue of evidence, Akufo-Addo went on to
urge President Mills to do more to show that he was sincere
about fostering unity and addressing the concerns of the NPP.
These are the concerns that we expect the Government to be
addressing to reduce tensions in the country.
Nana Akomea went further to suggest that the President should
call the NPP flagbearer to “have a frank and cordial discussion
with him about how to address these critical issues. We are
urging the President to make that call”.
However, the response of Government to the call by the NPP
Communications Director is very worrying and gives us serious
cause for concern about Government’s commitment to peace and
stability.
In dismissing the call for dialogue as premature and irrelevant,
Mr Segbefia said, “I think this is a diversionary tactic because
it is just to get us to move away from what we are supposed to
do, i.e. President Mills delivering on his manifesto agenda as
opposed to thinking about elections”.
This statement by the Deputy Chief-of-Staff creates the
unfortunate impression that running a nation is not
multi-tasking. It does not auger well for a country that appears
to be under an intense divisive strain caused by the
traditionally charged nature of our adversarial politics.
After the 2008 elections and the global accolade that we
received, it appeared we all went back to sleep. However, those
of us present in Ghana, those of us who were glued to our radio
stations by fear, those of us privy to the goings-on in and
around the Electoral Commission, the political parties and in
trouble-spots across the regions cannot forget how
excruciatingly close Ghana came to the kind of election
break-down and violence we saw in Kenya and Zimbabwe. What are
we doing now to avoid a la Cote d’Ivoire in Ghana, for instance?
In a recent nationwide opinion poll conducted by the IEA, a
governance think tank, 80 percent of the respondents indicated
their support for Ghana to adopt an electronic voting system.
Their reason was that they believed the adoption of E-voting
would enhance the credibility of the poll and speedy collation
of results from polling stations.
We believe it is high time the President and his appointees
appreciate the overwhelming sentiment in the country that we
need to do more to enhance the integrity of the electoral system
and address its concomitant concerns, many of which are,
crucially, about the security of our nation.
There lies a greater responsibility on the party in power to
take mature, responsible and active steps towards ensuring that
peace and tranquillity prevails in this country. President
Mills, in our view, can do more on this front than the domestic,
cantankerous posture which his presidency has so far chosen to
adopt.
The future of our democracy is by no means certain.
The Danquah Institute
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