Ghana-US deal: Nana Addo was just contradicting himself – Asiedu Nketia

The Inter-Party Coalition for National Sovereignty has said it remains opposed to the defence cooperation agreement between the government of Ghana and the United States despite President Nana Addo’s assurances on Thursday.

Addressing the nation on Thursday, the President stated that unlike previous military defence cooperation agreements with the United States that were done in secrecy by previous regimes, his administration chose to be transparent with the 2018 agreement because they mean well for the country.

The President described critics of the agreement as hypocrites who only seek to confuse Ghanaians with falsehood for political expediency.

“Let us concentrate and spend our energies on working together to achieve that goal of a happy and prosperous Ghana, and reject the hypocrisy of the naysayers who led our country into bankruptcy and the worse economic record of modern Ghanaian history.”

“Surely, this is the kind of cynical manipulation by reckless self-seekers, which, in the fullness of time, the people of Ghana will acknowledge and condemn. And I am sure that as the facts become clear and widely available, and as the people come to terms with the evidence, they will reject the falsehood and deliberate attempts to destabilize our peaceful country. Truth is sacrosanct,” President Akufo-Addo said.

Speaking at a press briefing today [Friday] in response to the President’s address, the General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress, [NDC], Johnson Asiedu Nketia, said Ghana is about to sign the worst military deal ever.

“We are committing ourselves to a course of no return. If Americans continue to realize that their interests will be best served if they remain here, no government of Ghana can walk out of that agreement even with five years notice and survive,” he argued.

He further punched holes in the President’s address on the agreement, saying he failed to take a clearly defined position on the agreement.

“Listening to him, you could not clearly define the position of the President whether he thought that the agreement was a secret document which was meant for everybody or that he wanted to accuse people of leaking the document or he thought that it was an open document that needed to be discussed by everybody. He ended up contradicting himself in all these fronts. On one hand he was praising himself of making the agreement open, on another hand he was accusing people of leaking what he intends to make open for a democratic discourse.”

“He tried to praise himself for allowing democracy to thrive and yet he ended up insulting people who were engaged in the democratic discourse. Again listening to him, I got a little bit confused when he tried to equate military base and military agreement with trade agreements and financial agreements and our dealings with multilateral agreements.”

We’ll demonstrate again

Meanwhile, a group calling itself the Ghana First Patriotic Front who led a demonstration last week with the backing of opposition parties against the agreement, has said it will go back to the streets in two weeks time to protest the government’s posture.

Convener for the Ghana First Patriotic Front, Edem Agbana in an interview with Citi News, said members of the group are lacing their boots for another mammoth demonstration.

“We are resuming our regional demonstration in Tamale in two weeks time. Next week we have a public forum. We will continue to let Ghanaians understand the agreement and how dangerous it is to the interest of Ghana. We will continue with the demonstration, we will continue with the mass mobilizations and mass actions against it.”