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21.07.2014 Feature Article

Hanna Tetteh Is A Rather Cheap And Gauche Foreign Minister

Hanna Tetteh Is A Rather Cheap And Gauche Foreign Minister
21.07.2014 LISTEN

As I write, hundreds of hired hoodlums in the pay of the bumbling Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) are reported to have massed up in front of the American Embassy, in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, in protest against what Ms. Hanna Tetteh, Ghana's Foreign Minister, has been widely reported to have described as a deliberate attempt by President Obama's resident chief diplomat to publicly disrespect Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama on the twitter social network (See "Hanna Tetteh Tweet-Fights US Embassy Over Cheeky Tweet" Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 7/20/14).

The U.S. Ambassador to Ghana has reportedly issued an apology to the office of President Mahama, stating that the twitter riposte to the Ghanaian leader's self-patting message to his people on the American-minted social network, in which the Ghanaian leader rather cynically and cavalierly claimed that his and the Ghanaian people's enormous economic sacrifices would shortly begin to pay off, was grossly done in error by an Embassy staff member who had inadvertently used the official twitter handle of the Embassy instead of a private one.

Well, and predictably, it clearly appears that the desperate and grossly incompetent Mahama government, in the process of recovering from the latest of its umpteenth cabinet reshuffle, was spoiling for a spat, a strategically distractive spat that would afford the tiny West African country a modicum of sympathy from the international community. The Mahama regime, it is significant to point out, is still reeling from its globally epic self-embarrassment in the infamous $3 million-plus presidential-jet flight of hard currency to Brazil, in bizarre settlement of match-appearance fees for the Black Stars players during the 2014 World-Cup Tournament.

At any rate, I expect at least two things to happen here, if the Mahama government is to still retain the favor and cordiality of the United States' government. One, Ms. Tetteh should either be promptly removed from the Foreign Ministry and reassigned (for the half-Hungarian fortysomething-year-old woman is clearly not diplomatically cut out for the job), or she ought to be publicly called to the carpet by President Mahama. The Ghanaian leader should then follow up with the prompt sanctioning of his rather emotionally immature and intellectually unbalanced Foreign Minister with a genuine concilliatory message of apology to the American Ambassador and President Barack H. Obama, assuming that Mr. Mahama decides to retain Ms. Tetteh at her post.

For me, personally, though, what is most fascinating about this raging diplomatic storm in a teacup, as it were, between Ghana and the world's foremost superpower, has to do with what it reveals about the patently infantile stuff of which some Ghanaian leaders, including President Mahama, are made. It well appears that the members of the Mahama cabinet and their associates spend an inordinate amount of salaried taxpayer time idling about on cyber-social networks, of which twitter clearly appears to be the latest mass addiction.

There is also another barely veiled personal side to the vacuously exuberant attitude of Ms. Tetteh to this otherwise very minor diplomatic blunder. And it has to do with the widely rumored romantic relationship between President Mahama and his irredeemably gauche Foreign Minister. There have even appeared reports of Mr. Mahama's preparing to sideline Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur in favor of Ms. Tetteh, as the former's running-mate for Election 2016. The Presidency, as Ghana's Flagstaff House is metonymically called, has, however, denied the preceding rumor.

But whether such salacious, albeit purely personal and private, rumor contains any iota of veracity is decidedly beside the point. What may well be of great national interest, however, is the extent to which President Mahama may have compromised his judgment by naming a clearly unqualified individual to the indisputably critical cabinet portfolio of Foreign Minister, as a result of allegedly getting too intimate and personal with Ms. Tetteh.

Needless to say, the post of Foreign Minister is Ghana's most prominent visage to the outside world. And the reckless and infantile behavior of Ms. Tetteh does not project a serious image of the country abroad.

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