The Managing News Editor of the Insight Newspaper Kwesi Pratt Jnr has chided minority MPs for betraying Ghana by failing to challenge the Defense Minister at the joint committee meeting level that approved the controversial US-Ghana military deal.
“When this agreement was finally ratified, I was in Parliament House and to my embarrassment, Dominic Nitiwul, the Defense Minister wrote the list of persons who attended the meeting of the committee which finally approved this agreement…majority of the persons were from the NDC.â€
The Minority in Parliament on March 23 staged a walkout from Parliament over the Ghana-US defence cooperation agreement presently before the House for consideration and ratification.
Speaking at a public forum organized by the Ghana First Patriotic Front as part of activities to intensify pressure on the government to withdraw the Ghana-US Military Cooperation Agreement, Kwesi Pratt Jnr said the failure of the NDC members on that committee to use their numbers to reject the agreement and publicly criticise it, is a complete betrayal.
This is despite massive public protest against the deal which many including the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) described as “dangerous†and a sale of Ghana’s sovereignty.
The Government of Ghana, according to a leaked document, has approved the agreement with the US to set up a military base in Ghana and also allow unrestricted access to a host of facilities and wide-ranging tax exemptions to the United States Military—a claim the government of Ghana and the US denied.
Meanwhile, President Akufo-Addo has said he would never do anything to compromise or sell the sovereignty of Ghana.
As part of the agreement, Ghana will give US military unrestricted access to some military installations in the country and in return, the United States of America will support Ghana’s military with $20million.
However Reacting to the accusation in an address to the nation on Thursday, 5 April 2018, Nana Akufo-Addo emphasised that the US military was not setting up a base in Ghana, adding that, he would never do anything to compromise the sovereignty of the country.
He said: “Fellow Ghanaians let me conclude by saying how outrage I am by the defamatory comments of my political opponents some of whose patriotism can be so easily questioned that the sovereignty of this country has been sold by my government and myself. I’ll never be the president that will compromise or sell the sovereignty of our country. I respect deeply the memory of the great patriots who sacrificed and toiled and brought about our independence and freedom.â€