Would Hanna Tetteh Really Be Relevant in Libya?

Hanna Tetteh

Her mother is Hungarian and her father Ghanaian, so it is not altogether surprising that Ms. Hanna Tetteh, Ghana’s former Foreign Minister under the corruption-wracked government of former President John Dramani Mahama, would have UN diplomats from European countries like France and Germany lining behind her bid to be named as the United Nations’ Special Envoy to war-torn Libya, even as the United States of America’s Chief Diplomat at the UN’s New York City Headquarters bucks such appointment (See “United States Accused of Blocking Hanna Tetteh’s Appointment as UN Envoy to Libya” GhanaGuardian.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/2/20).

At any rate, I sincerely don’t know what academic, linguistic and professional training or experience qualifies the widely rumored Mahama paramour for the job. I also don’t suppose Ms. Tetteh to be the best qualified available Ghanaian diplomatic candidate for the job. She may, indeed, be more eager to serve in the obviously oversized capacity of the UN’s Special Envoy to Libya primarily because of the cushy salary and other comfortable perks that come with such job description. Which is all well and good, except that what the afore-referenced news report failed to highlight was the fact that as Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Ms. Tetteh exhibited great dislike and insufferably uncouth attitude towards all things American, just like her former boss and staunch accomplish in such diplomatic misbehavior.

At least one instance of such misbehavior that stands out in my mind, and embarrassingly so, was when Ms. Tetteh unwisely took on the extant American Ambassador to Ghana, Mr. Robert P. Jackson, in a matter that involved some false pretenses having to do with fiscal disciplinary measures that the Mahama Presidency and cabinet claimed to have put in place as a means of these key operatives of the Mahama government’s show of sympathy with the economically deprived Ghanaian citizenry. To be certain, it was an issue that purely verged on the internal affairs of the Ghanaian government and the country at large, but it was also a strategic political gimmickry and a shambolic one at that that the Chief Representative of a major financial donor like the United States could not sit silently by and watch with approval. This author wrote and published a column at the time in which he predicted that Ms. Tetteh and some of her poormouthing diplomatic associates in the Mahama regime, including Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, would pay dearly for down the pike.

If her appointment or secondment to Libya is based more on a nationality rotational basis rather than individual merit or qualifications, then the legally trained former Member of Ghana’s Parliament on the ticket of the present main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), can be readily replaced with preferably another Ghanaian candidate with much better diplomatic skills, preferably a career diplomat and not a brash politician and a diplomatic upstart, possibly a candidate with a professional background in security studies, especially a professional knowledge of the Maghreb and a passable familiarity with the Arab language and culture. On the latter count, it goes without saying that if Ms. Tetteh is not getting the sort of backing that she thinks and believes that she deserves, then she is perfectly right because if I were in a position of power and/or influence to affect her appointment as an American citizen, I definitely would not spare this prime opportunity to teach her a lesson or two in diplomatic decorum.

Like her former boss, Ms. Tetteh is also inordinately prone to bribery and corruption, as was once exposed in the gift of a school building that she shamelessly solicited from the extant Chinese Woman Ambassador in Ghana, while Ms. Tetteh was still Foreign Minister, in her parliamentary constituency, as a birthday present. It was an obviously criminal and deliberately solicited political interference from the Chinese that was aimed at ensuring that she retained her parliamentary seat. She would be shortly voted out by her discerning and embarrassed constituents. Strictly speaking, Ms. Tetteh has the diplomatic thinking, skills and behavior of a quarrelsome second grader. She is also very likely to become an unworthy security risk for her employers, like her former boss.

As for this nonsense that the Americans may be stalling her bid for Special Envoy to an oil-rich Libya because Ms. Tetteh is not the sort of envoy that the Americans could easily control, that is sheer malarkey. Poppycock. The fact of the matter is that the Americans have more than adequate power and influence at the world body, whose foundation they played a prime role, to worry themselves silly about this one individual faux-socialist small fry party-machine operative.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

June 21, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]