Somebody must quickly investigate this fishy Asutsuare affair

On any blessed day, I would prefer not to involve the Americans in the purely internal affairs of Ghanaian citizens and our leaders. But unfortunately, some strange things have happened in our country in recent months that have deeply drawn the Americans into the otherwise sovereign internal affairs of Ghanaians, and therefore make it necessary for me to add my voice to what Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Assin-Central, in the Central Region, has to say about the fact of the leaders of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) having contracted some American citizens with military and/or security and combat experience to train some young NDC operatives for purely party business in the lead-up to the 2016 general election (See “Polls: Americans Training NDC Bodyguards – Ken Agyapong” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/26/16).

Well, the last time that I heard any NDC leader mention the name of Asutsuare, it was Labor Minister Haruna Iddrisu, and his mentioning of the name of Asutsuare was in connection with the intended resuscitation of the long-defunct Asutsuare Sugar Factory. About the same time, Mr. Iddrisu also announced that plans were afoot for the revival of the Komenda Sugar Plantation and Factory as well.

Now it turns out that, after all, the mention of Asutsuare had absolutely nothing to do with sugar or anything saccharine whatsoever but, in fact, everything to do with the covert militarization of some functionaries of the ruling party. The firebrand and straight-shooting Mr. Agyapong is alleging that President John Dramani Mahama has invited some American military personnel unofficially into the country to train NDC recruits in armaments at Asutsuare, in the Eastern Region, who are currently training these cadres as security detail for the leaders of the ruling party, in much the same way that the three arrested retired South African security officers were alleged by the Mahama government to be illegally engaged in the combat training of NPP youths for self-defense and crowd-control activities in the lead-up to Election 2016. I smell a funky element of abject hypocrisy here.

If this allegation turns out to be accurate – and we hereby call on Speaker Edward Doe Adjaho to immediately establish a bipartisan parliamentary enquiry into the same – then this latest act of flagrant mischief makes it two, that is the collusive attempt by the Obama Administration and the thoroughgoing corrupt and grossly incompetent Mahama regime to make life inexcusably harsh and ungovernable for the Ghanaian people. The benefit-of-the-doubt part of me tells me that such cheap and tawdry gimmickry is highly unlikely to be so furtively and viciously staged by an unquestionably progressive and internationalist President Obama. In the days ahead, one expects Washington’s resident Chief Diplomat in Accra to come out publicly to either categorically confirm or deny this most serious allegation.

If the foregoing charge has teeth, or validity, then it is only fair for the Director of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) to promptly release the three retired South African security officers who were recently arrested at the El-Capitano Hotel at Agona-Duakwa and summarily indicted and charged with criminally breaching the country’s security system. Indeed, if any of our politicians could be aptly described as having flagrantly acted to endanger Ghana’s national security and integrity, it is definitely the key operatives of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress who recently shipped in the two Saudi-born Yemeni citizens from the U.S. Naval Base on Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay.

That President Mahama undertook to host these two U.S. Intelligence-certified terrorists without the knowledge of even the members of the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee, decidedly makes President Mahama far more dangerous to the country’s security apparatus than Mr. Osama Bin Laden. It also makes it necessary and even imperative for the leaders of the main opposition New Patriotic Party to defend their supporters and sympathizers come what may. We simply cannot have a country where any political party determined to hang on to power at all costs covertly resorts to the contractual training and arming of its members and key operatives to the hilt, while the rest of us are left vulnerable and defenseless. Is this also part of the proposed NDC School of Ideology for which the rambunctious cross-dressing Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia embarked on a mission to Beijing sometime last year?

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