President Mills Is Fickle Minded - Sir John

General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, has labeled President John Evans Atta Mills as someone who has a vacillating attitude and easily joins the chorus.

To buttress his statement, Sir John, as the NPP General Secretary is affectionately called, said a couple of months ago (July), President Mills directed the Editor of the state-owned Ghanaian Times newspaper to retract a publication carried by the newspaper over the raging homosexual issue.

The news article, which had no by-line, quoted the President as saying that the government would institute measures to check the menace of homosexuality and lesbianism from gaining grounds within the social fabric of the country.

At a thanksgiving service at the Sunyani Central Ebenezer Presbyterian Church of Ghana, after the President’s resounding victory over the former First Lady, the Minister-In-Charge of the church, Rev. Joseph Bosoma took advantage of the President’s visit to table four pressing social issues which in the view of the church, needed to be tackled by the government.

He particularly appealed to President Mills to help address the issues of homosexuality, indecent dressing among the youth, Ghana’s porous borders and the Fulani herdsmen menace.

Responding to the concerns raised by the Reverend Minister, the President, according to the report, promised to tackle the issue of homosexuality by stating that the acts were contrary not only to the word of God, but also the cultural norms and values of the Ghanaian society.

“The word of God is clear and unambiguous; what is right is right, what is wrong is wrong,” President Mills was quoted by the paper as saying.

President Mills, according to media reports, was unhappy with the Tuesday, July 12, 2011 banner headline, “We’ll stop the Gays – President” published soon after massively defeating Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, at the Sunyani congress of the party.

The Ghanaian Times had no option but to retract the story and apologize to President Mills in its Wednesday, July 13, 2011 issue.

However, his denial of that story and reaction to the recent anti-gay aid threat issued by the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron is what Sir John claims raises questions about the President’s position on homosexuality.

In a sharp riposte to David Cameron’s threat, President Mills emphatically stated that Ghana will not legalize homosexuality, adding that the UK Prime Minister does not have the right to direct other sovereign nations what they should do especially where their societal norms and ideals are different from those which exist in his society.

Juxtaposing the two responses, the NPP Chief Scribe posited that since President Mills asked the Editor of the state-owned newspaper to apologize it buttresses the point that he is not against homosexuality.

Speaking in an interview on Radio Gold with Suhuyini Alhassan, Sir John said: “It’s a U-turn…he (President Mills) just wants to join in the chorus. The government does not have any clear policy as far as this is concerned…They have only changed their position not because they are against it… this about-turn position is as a result of Muslims, Christians and civil societies standing against it… The President has been pushed and that is why he made that statement,” he said.

According to Sir John, the NPP is the only group that has been consistent on the issue of gay rights

“We (NPP) have always stood against it but the President has not been consistent,” he said.