Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw
Owusu
Wednesday,
January 20, 2016
New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential
candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has broken his silence on the
controversial decision by the Mahama-led NDC government to accept suspected hardcore
terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Ghanaian soil, describing the decision
as ‘failure of leadership.’
“The problem we face is
yet another case of failure of leadership by the president and is hard example
of his belief that he is answerable to no one, not even to the laws of the
Republic,” he fired.
Nana Akufo-Addo’s
rejection of the settling of the suspected terrorists in Ghana has been
supported by the flagbearer of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Dr
Edward Mahama, who says it was bad for President Mahama to host the two former Guantanamo
detainees in the country.
Nana Akufo-Addo was paying
tribute at the funeral of the late Alhaji Alhassan Bin Salih, a former member
of the Council of State during the Kufuor regime, in Wa yesterday.
“I am certain that if Alhaji Bin
Salih were around today, he would be horrified about some of the careless
language being employed by some in the discussions on the resettlement in our
country of former Guantanamo Bay detainees,” he said.
According to the NPP flagbearer,
President John Mahama breached Ghana’s anti-terrorism laws by agreeing with the
United States government to host the two former detainees - Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid
Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby - who have been described as the foot soldiers of Osama
Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group.
Nana Addo said Section 35 of the
Anti-Terrorism Act, 2008 (Act 762) prohibits the transaction into which
President Mahama entered with the United States government and described the president’s
action as “lawlessness in the highest levels of the state,” adding that it
could not “produce good governance.”
“Since he claimed that only
Presidents Rawlings and Kufuor have the right to criticise him, I would have
wished that he had found them worthy and consulted those our two former leaders
before he took this grave decision that has consequences for us all.
“If he had done so, the Ghanaian
people may have all been spared the disquiet and anxiety in this time of
justifiably heightened fear of global terrorism...,” he said.
He described Alhaji Bin Salih as
a personality who “stood not just for the NPP, but stood and fought for the
peace and integrity of Ghana,” saying, “He believed in religious tolerance.”
Edward Mahama
The PNC
leader, Dr Edward Mahama, said he would have rejected the suspected terrorists
if he were in the president’s position.
“Edward
Mahama would not have brought the Guantanamo Bay people at this time because we
are going into an election with a disputed voter register; we have seen within
the parties incidents of violence and then you bring in people with violence. I
think it is a wrong move.”
He argued
that President Mahama had broken Ghana’s 60-year record of being non-aligned to
any super power and that “by this one act, we have aligned ourselves to
America,” exposing the country to unanticipated threats.
“We were
non-aligned when there was a bipolar world - Russia and America. We were
non-aligned when there was a uni-polar when America alone was the super power.
Now we have Russia, China and America. I don’t think we should have taken this
step,” Dr Mahama stated.
Furore
Several religious bodies, including
the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, have expressed disgust at the hosting of the
Al-Qaeda terrorists from Guantanamo Bay.
The Catholic Bishops, who have threatened
to stage a demonstration over the reckless action, have described the decision
as “wrong and dangerous.”
“We, the members of the Ghana
Catholic Bishops’ Conference, have received news of the transfer of two former
Guantanamo Bay prisoners, namely, Mahmoud Omar Mohammed Bin Atef (36 years) and
Khalid Shayk Mohammed (34 years) to Ghana with great distress and sadness and
wish to call on our government to act responsibly and in the interest of the
nation by sending these men back to wherever they came from,” the Bishops said.
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