Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Tuesday September 27, 2010.
Kwesi Pratt Junior, Managing Editor of Insight has descended heavily on President John Evan Atta Mills for his ‘free school uniform, exercise books, elimination of schools under trees’ address delivered at the United Nations General Assembly.
“You compare the speech that our President gave to speeches delivered by Evo Morales (Bolivian President) and see how he grabbed world attention. It is incredible…I must say with all honesty that I was not impressed at all with President Mills’ speech.”
Speaking on Radio Gold’s news analysis programme Alhaji and Alhaji last Saturday, Mr. Pratt who has been defending President Mills and NDC government said the free school uniform, exercise books, and elimination of schools under trees speech made by the UN “is the kind of speech you make at your national assembly and not at the UN General Assembly”.
The UN is a world platform where you go and mobilize the world on issues and so on…what are you saying at the UN… we have eliminated schools under trees…we are distributing free exercise books and school uniforms and so on… what has these got to do with the UN.”
“To be honest with you, even though the issues the President raised are critical to the development of Ghana, they are issues not worth the attention they received at the General Assembly.”
Mr. Pratt said “yesterday when I listened to the President’s speech I felt very uncomfortable…so something is wrong with the speech writers of the President, something is wrong with the Foreign Ministry and something is wrong with developing a global perspective.”
He said most President used the forum to discuss problems of the world and how they see the world but President Mills went there to talk about distribution of free school uniform, free exercise books, schools under trees among others.
“Look, the organization of free and fair elections is important because if we do not do it we risk pushing our country to the brink of catastrophe but why the UN?”
He said one of the key issues being decided at the UN is whether or not the people of Palestine are entitled to a seat in the UN but President Mills chose not to join the debate and state Ghana’s position on the matter saying “why can’t we be bold enough and join the world movement in condemning Zionism”.
He said the world is confronted with the bellicosity of imperialism and added that the UN had become “something which is in the back pocket of the United States” adding “on the basis of things which were found in Wikileaks and so on, the US is killing hundreds of thousands of people across the globe.”
“What is the stand of Ghana? Do we mean that we have no stand? Are we afraid of the US? Are we afraid of the imperialists? What is wrong with us” he asked.
“Look at the bellicosity of the imperialism. Look at the ravaging recklessness of imperialism and so on and we go to talk about free school uniforms.”
He said for President Mills not to take the opportunity to re-affirm Ghana’s support for Palestine when in fact Ghana was one of the first countries to recognize the state of Palestine is unpardonable.
“We took the lead in recognizing the state of Palestine…how come that at this juncture we are all running away…why are we afraid of the US?”
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