*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.
