Who Is Bombande Fooling?

It is rather regrettable for Mr. Emmanuel Bombande, the former Mahama-appointed Deputy Foreign Minister, to underestimate the diplomatic and civic sophistication of Ghanaian citizenry. Which may explain precisely why he so desperately, albeit risibly lamely, attempts to throw dust into the eyes of the Ghanaian public by falsely claiming that the 2015 Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) struck between Ghana and the United States, which was signed by Ms. Hanna Tetteh, the extant Foreign Affairs Minister, was fundamentally different from that which was transparently and democratically ratified by Ghana’s Parliament on March 23, 2018 (See “Bombande Fires Back At Akufo-Addo Over ‘Outrageous Anti-American’ Claim” MyJoyOnline.com / Modernghana.com 4/6/18).

For starters, to be credible beyond any shadow of doubt, as it were, Mr. Bombande ought to have published the relevant portions of the Defense Cooperation Agreements (DCAs) that were signed by Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, as the democratically elected President of the Republic of Ghana in 1998 and, again, in 2000, and demonstrate to the Ghanaian public where any diplomatic exemptions, such vis-à-vis taxation, for example, were granted or not granted the Americans that do not appear in the 2015 DCA pact that was secretly and unconstitutionally signed off on by President John Dramani Mahama. The fact of the matter is that such pacts, as the United States has routinely and traditionally signed with other countries, including even such globally powerful and politically and technologically advanced countries such as Britain, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Germany are fundamentally invariable or the same, especially in matters verging on the disciplining of military personnel and non-military personnel covered by such diplomatic compacts.

As well as, of course, questions of tax exemptions, drivers’ licenses and the specific use of radio spectrums. I suppose the latter question has arisen because of the Akufo-Addo Administration’s rigorous clampdown on tax-dodging operators and proprietors of radio and television stations. But the sort of compacts or military cooperation agreements being discussed here squarely falls under the subject of diplomatic immunity. In other words, foolhardily projecting his ignorance on the subject at issue on the strength of his dubious experience as a former second-banana foreign affairs’operative only further exposes Mr. Bombande to withering ridicule and inexcusable international embarrassment for the country at large.

Now, let me give Mr. Bombande and the cognitively blind anti-American NDC supporters and sympathizers a striking example of a situation where offending military or military-police personnel were not subjected to the laws of the host country of their operation. Well, you guessed right. The example for Mr. Bombande and his associates is the recent globally embarrassing case in which some Ghanaian police personnel charged with protecting some South Sudanese refugees were accused of either raping or having sexually taken advantage of some of the women among these refugees. In that case, as I vividly recall, not a single one of these criminally accused UN-sponsored Ghanaians were subjected to the laws of South Sudan. Instead, the criminal suspects were promptly evacuated from the “crime scene,” while UN investigators delved into the charges and brought those forensically found to have committed the crimes and/or charges preferred against them to book or justice. This is standard procedure.

There have also been equally outrageous cases involving American soldiers in Japan, Germany and elsewhere, in which personnel charged with abusing citizens of the host countries were indicted or interdicted and promptly court-martialed or disciplined by the American military hierarchy. Once again, what we clearly and outrageously see here are the operatives of the NDC cynically and recklessly attempting to make a proverbial storm out of a teapot, by justifying what is purely diplomatically pedestrian where the onus of policy decisions rests with themselves, while simultaneously mischievously incriminating strikingly or essentially the same policy decisions undertaken by their main political and ideological opponents. The fact of the matter is that policy decisions verging on defense matters are the statutory and/or constitutional preserve of Ghana’s Ministry of Defense, and not the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as resorted to by ex-President John Dramani Mahama, when he delegated the ratification of Ghana’s 2015 Defense Cooperation Agreement to Ms. Hanna Tetteh, his Foreign Affairs Minister, instead of the extant Minister of Defense. This is where the “unspeakable hypocrisy” that President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo spoke of in his national address on this matter on April 5, 2018 comes into play.

Mr. Bombande’s argument that Mr. Mahama’s signing of the DCA pact with the Americans over and above the heads of the democratically elected parliamentary representatives of the Ghanaians electorate was perfectly normal, because the Americans had not done precisely the same, is “unspeakably” preposterous. It is “unspeakably” preposterous because Ghana does not operate on exactly the same philosophical and constitutionally functional tenets of American democracy, although there may be striking similarities between the two systems of governance. Besides, compared to the United States, Ghana is decidedly or indisputably a minor player in global politics for Mr. Bombandeto cavalierly presume the former to require the same Congressional oversight leverage vis-à-vis the strictly evanescent and minor acquisition of permission to use Ghana’s relatively insignificant military installations and facilities. You see, in the United States, both the Department of State, or Foreign Ministry, and the Pentagon or Defense Department, are endowed with vast and autonomous operational powers that their much smaller Ghanaian counterparts do not have.

The critic also risibly shoots wide, when Mr. Bombande alleges that some Americans have railed against the EMSCA pact without naming names. Come on, Little Boy Bombande, tell us who these “Anti-America Americans” are, and those of us who have been living with them for more than a generation, and counting, will be able to readily show you and your cronies their character, as the old song promises.

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