It Takes a Conductor to Know the Chorus

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

Jan. 29, 2016

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I have read Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby’s article titled “Gitmo Two: ‘It’s Surprising Nana Addo is Leading the Chorus’” (Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/25/16) – at the request of Dr. Von Fleischer, a regular reader of my columns, by his own testimony – and find it to be distasteful and pathetically insulting to the intelligence of both the target of malediction and the Ghanaian citizenry at large. In the main, the notoriously inveterate Akufo-Addo hater attempts to put up a spirited defense for his political idol, namely President John Dramani Mahama. And to be certain, it is quite a good try except that his defense falls flat on its face and woefully lacks common sense and coherence. It is also very badly edited; but I intend to skip the latter aspect where, for example, “bipartisan senate committees” comes out as “bilateral senate committees.”

For instance, the former CEO of the Volta River Authority attempts farcically to ingratiate himself with the Obama White House – for reasons best known to the critic himself – by faulting Nana Akufo-Addo’s indisputably righteous assertion that Ghana’s Constitution expressly prohibits the accommodation of either certified terrorists or suspects of terrorism by the elected President of the country, on the rather gratuitous grounds that such stance does not gibe or synch with the implicitly “superior” interests of the United States. This is patently absurd, because Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution was not crafted to serve the especial interests of the United States at the expense of the national security of Ghanaian citizenry.

We must also note that pragmatic diplomacy is flexible enough to both accommodate the best interests of Ghanaians and the empathetic understanding of Americans vis-à-vis the inalienable right of the former and their elected government to look first and foremost towards the safety and security of Ghanaian citizens. Indeed, it is inexcusably absurd for Dr. Wereko-Brobby to suppose that the only savvy conduct of diplomacy is one that invariably sacrifices the paramount interests of Ghana whenever the latter is envisaged to conflict with those of a greater power such as the United States, its traditional Western allies and Russia and China, for some obvious examples.

It may also be recalled that recently, Dr. Wereko-Brobby stated categorically that he was a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who had absolutely no use for democratic capitalist-oriented political parties like the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP); and so one is at a total loss as to why the man popularly known as Tarzan would presume to insinuate himself into the affairs of ideological suasions of which he has far less interest than the man he presumes to lecture on the same. It is also preposterous for Tarzan to presume that just because some 13 African countries have consented to hosting Gitmo terrorism suspects makes Ghana automatically compelled to acceding to the same, irrespective of our peculiar national temperament and level of security.

Then also, what has the fact of such terror-wracked African countries as Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria’s not having been selected by the United States to host Gitmo residents got to do with the decision of whether Ghana ought to host some of these Islamo-Jihadist terrorism suspects or not? This kind of “herd mentality” verges on more than scandalous naivety; it is simply stupid! I also don’t know why Dr. Wereko-Brobby is so hell-bent on blaming Akufo-Addo for the country’s polarized political culture which he apologetically claims was responsible for President Mahama’s flat refusal to inform his most formidable political opponent of his decision to hosting the Gitmo Two, and instead leaving that aspect of his primary leadership responsibility to officials of the American Embassy in Ghana.

I am also quite certain that had he found it expedient, Tarzan would have cornered a seat on the wagon of those congenital liars – including Mr. Irbad Ibrahim – who claim that Nana Akufo-Addo was let in on the Gitmo Racket a whopping 6 months prior to the arrival of Messrs. Bin Atef and Al-Dhuby in the country, instead of some 24 hours. It is also plain oafish for Dr. Wereko-Brobby to presume that mainline Christian leaders like Bishop Osei-Bonsu, the President of the Ghana Conference of Catholic Bishops, ought to have kept silent and pretended that everything was kosher about the Gitmo Two, merely because these clinical and political undesirables had been “unanimously cleared” of any acts of criminality by all of America’s leading federal security agencies as not being high-risk terror operatives.

The logical question to ask here is as follows: Were these U.S. security agencies established to cater to the interests of Ghanaians? Also it is unpardonably dumb to suppose that just because these two terror suspects had not be brought to trial makes them automatically not guilty of any heinous acts of criminality. Tarzan may want to explain to his Ghanaian audience the sort of “Peacekeeping” activities he implicitly claims Messrs. Bin Atef and Al-Dhuby were engaged in at the time of their arrest by the Americans on the Al-Qaeda and Taliban killing fields of Afghanistan.

By all means, this self-proclaimed diehard socialist has every right to shill for President Mahama. Indeed, this is not the very first time that Tarzan is making such asinine overtures towards Mr. Mahama. He once wrote an article earnestly pleading with Mahama to name him his Special Advisor on Dumsor Affairs. But Dr. Wereko-Brobby is making a great mistake here if he thinks that he can second-guess Nana Akufo-Addo on matters of diplomacy and the sovereignty and integrity of the good people of Ghana. Or that he could put Nana Akufo-Addo on the defensive for crimes and blunders brazenly and willfully committed by President Mahama.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs.