President of policy think-tank, IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has condemned President Nana Akufo-Addo for the seemingly offensive path he adopted when he addressed the nation on the controversial Ghana-US Defence Cooperation agreement.
Mr. Cudjoe says for a moment, “it sounded to me like I was listening to President Mahama all over again.”
According to Mr. Cudjoe, President Akufo-Addo failed to address any of the issues raised by critics of the agreement, but instead went on an attacking spree likening him to a proverbial “dead goat” posture.
“To be fair, it sounded to me like I was listening to President Mahama all over again when he said people who complain about certain aspects of his decisions were purposeless lamentations. In actual fact he eventually said he was a dead goat. And it is as if it is all playing back to me. And I don’t think he the [President] addressed any aspect of the major issues around the bill,” he said in a Citi News interview.
President Akufo-Addo on Thursday night addressed the nation on the agreement which has been widely criticized by a section of Ghanaians.
Whereas some people, especially those on the side of the opposition National Democratic Congress, argued that the agreement was not in the best interest of the country and an affront to the sovereignty of Ghana, the governing party thinks otherwise.
The President, during the address, 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.
But Franklin Cudjoe in a Citi News interview said although other countries have signed the same pact with the United States of America, those “countries have been able to extract more concessions out of the same templates. We did nothing, zero.”
“It has nothing to do with whether some people are in opposition and they don’t like the bill, and they are being hypocritical, that’s not the point. So I would have wished that the President did not even give that speech, and perhaps somebody lower than him should have given that speech,” he added.
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.”
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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citinewsroom.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin