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Parliament Used As Rubber Stamp To Ratify Non-Surrender Bilateral Agreement with US

November 4, 2003
Posted to the web November 4, 2003

Bismark Bebli

THE Leader of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), Mr. Dan Lartey, yesterday lambasted the government for using parliament as a 'rubber stamp' to ratify the non-surrender bilateral agreement between Ghana and the United States.

"The president has only used the parliament as a rubber stamp for ratifying the agreement. Giving presidential assent to an agreement before sending it to parliament for approval means that you are only using parliament as a rubber stamp", Mr. Lartey charged in an interview with The Chronicle in Accra yesterday.

The veteran politician who chairs the grand coalition of Nkrumaist parties comprising GCPP, the People's National Convention (PNC) and EAGLE party, said the President knew that he had majority in parliament and that there was no way that the agreement would be rejected.

"Parliament should be able to have an opportunity to exhaust debate on the issue before endorsing it, this I say is unfortunate."

Mr. Lartey expressed shock and dismay at the way the government failed to subject the agreement to public debate before forwarding it to parliament for ratification.

'I am surprised about the way things were done. It means that there is nothing that the government could do to back out of the agreement. Backing out of it would come into fruition when the next government comes into power and subjects the issue to public debate but as at now the president used his whip.

"The agreement needs public debate because there is enormous confusion in it. As it is now, the situation is more complex and that is why we needed time for debate and more clarifications before it was sent to parliament for approval".

Mr. Lartey said the government has not told the nation what the agreement actually entails, adding that it seems to him that probably the US feels that there are cases of abuses which are likely to start with her citizens and she wants to have a safe haven for them.

Demanding further explanation, the GCPP leader, popularly called Mr. Domestication, asked whether if a person who has committed a serious crime from US and is on the run to Ghana he could be extradited or not?

Touching on the recent report by the Transparency International on the corruption perception index, the chairman noted he was not surprised that corruption in the country has increased.

He attributed this to over liberalization of the economy - too much import with less export - and lack of jobs resulting in the huge number of hawkers in the streets.

Mr. Lartey contended that there the country is crisis. "The country is full of crisis and if a country is full of crisis, the country is vulnerable to all manner of malpractices, the highest among them being corruption. It is no wonder that there is an upward trend in corruption because the government is not producing."

In order to avert corruption, he urged the government to tap the natural resources, help the farmers with subsidies to enable them to produce and above all create more jobs. "When more jobs are created, corruption would reduce, because if there is scarcity anything can happen," he predicted.

In a related development Linda Akrasi reports that the minority spokesman on Legal, Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni, has stated that it is very wrong in principle for Ghana to sign and ratify the bilateral agreement with the United States on the surrender of American citizens to the International Criminal Court (ICC) because it is in sharp contradiction with the principle that led to the establishment of the ICC under the Rome treaty.

He noted that Ghana has ratified the Rome treaty, taking a principled stand against impunity, which the ICC is aiming at doing.

Commenting on the ratification of the agreement in an interview with The Chronicle in Accra yesterday Alhaji Mumuni said that images coming from Austria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Somalia have serious human rights violations and the global role and determination was that such heinous crimes against humanity such as genocide and ethnic cleansing should not go unpunished. That was why the United Nations, leading the world, championed the establishment of the ICC.

The MP for Kumbugu said the United States for whatever reason has not ratified the Rome treaty, so are countries like Russia, China, India but beyond not ratifying, the US has decided to bring about international bilateral agreements whereby countries that have ratified like Ghana would be bound not to surrender US citizens as well as its foreign contractors to the ICC.

Alhaji. Mumuni said that is basically wrong because it undermines the integrity of the jurisdiction of the ICC and this is why Ghana should never have signed it.

He explained that the military assistance the USA has specifically stated is in respect of each of the countries with whom it is seeking to enter into this bilateral agreement. "If you did not sign it with them you have to face sanctions which involves the withdrawal of certain financial assistance to those countries. In the case of Ghana it has to do with military assistance to the Ghana armed forces".

He said that makes the whole transaction immoral because it is clear blackmail for the US to say that, since Ghana's relationship with the US should be based on mutual respect and understanding and not on a beggar- owner relationship.

"To think that we succumb to that kind of blackmail really is a betrayal of our national sovereignty and our dignity as a nation.

"Other countries have rebuked it on that score including even countries that are in no better positions and are vulnerable like Ghana, have rebuked the agreement that we have signed".

On the implications that the agreement might cause Ghana in the future, the minority spokesman said that Ghana's standing in the world would be adversely affected since people are not going to take Ghana serious because "we can blow hot and cold".

"We will be described as being inconsistent and our behaviour would be unpredictable and even when we appear to be standing on a certain principle we can shift grounds when some kind of interest is thrown at us. It's a matter that goes to affect our credibility as a nation and its most unfortunate".