Speech on Military Deal: Gyampo scores Akufo-Addo 70%

University of Ghana lecturer Professor Ransford Gyampo has commended President Akufo-Addo over his Thursday night address on the controversial military deal between Ghana and the United States.

According to the outspoken lecturer, the President deserves a 70% mark for the speech which largely threw shots at the opposition National Democratic congress.

“Mr President, I am happy you have spoken on this matter. I am quite elated because I whispered into the ears of some people about the need for you to speak as Father of the nation and assure us about your commitment to safeguarding our security.

“You have done this so eloquently. I believe the hypocrisy of the typical Ghanaian politician must always be exposed and I am happy you did this at least partially. I liked the rhetorical question that interrogated how a document destined to parliament could be described as secret. Our Media must not always be in a rush to break news, especially when they aren’t sure,” Prof. Gyampo wrote in a Facebook post.

He however criticized the president for not being entirely forthright with the details of the current agreement with the US.

“But Mr President you know your speech cannot escape my scrutiny. As you are very much aware, there are some slight differences between the previous agreements and the current one. Unfortunately, you were silent on the differences. That wasn’t fair and transparent enough.

“Again, as you may be aware, there is a great difference between procedural and substantive democracy. Given what happened to the agreement in Parliament, I am tempted to say that there wasn’t much difference between those who signed their agreement in secrecy and those who sent it to parliament. Indeed, sending a document to parliament without allowing minority views to tamper the original agreement satisfies only the tenets of procedural democracy, which means little in the quest for democratic maturity.

“Sending an unsigned agreement to parliament in my view was an ingenious strategy to solicit a bipartisan input into it before signing it finally. If Parliament could not make input into the agreement; and if the Attorney-General’s input could not change the contents of the agreement, then why was it sent to parliament in the first place? It could have been signed in secrecy too. Parliament can ratify an agreement that has already been signed by the executive. But if an unsigned agreement gets to parliament, then one expects the content of the agreement to change a little to reflect the views of parliament…. Because you omitted the issues above, I”ll score you 70 percent which is a B”.