The Irony of Mills Calling For Dialogue in Cote D’ivoire

*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 17

th 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.