After waiting in the wings and standing on the sidelines for what seemed like eternity, one of the country’s self-styled pressure groups, OccupyGhana, finally crawled out of its hole to contribute its two pesewas to the ongoing debate about the Ghana/USA military cooperation agreement.
In a lengthy and tedious press release on Monday filled with legal jargon, the group put the blame for the anger, confusion and misunderstanding surrounding the agreement, squarely on the shoulders of parliament.
It faulted the legislative body for rushing the ratification of the agreement without according Ghanaians the time to debate and assimilate its terms. OccupyGhana then called for a legislative instrument to give parliament another opportunity to closely scrutinize the agreement and make the necessary changes.
The group’s sudden emergence and belated interest in the military agreement raises a very important question. What was preventing the group from jumping into the fray and engaging other Ghanaians in a healthy debate on such an important national issue.?
I can’t say precisely why it took OccupyGhana so long to make up its mind about the military agreement. Nonetheless, I am convinced that the group was just bidding its time; it apparently did not want to offend the sensibilities of its patrons and assorted paymasters.
And maybe, just maybe, OccupyGhana wanted the raging anger and bitterness which the agreement had ignited to die down. That OccupyGhana would come out and take a stand, albeit a neutral one, on the military agreement entered into by its chief patron, the NPP, is a naked attempt to salvage its reputation, which has taken a severe beating since January 2017.
The group fears becoming irrelevant in Ghanaian politics, little surprise it rushed to put out a belated press release. The writing has been on the wall for some time now for OG. Ghanaians have grown increasingly suspicious of the group and some have even accused it of being overly partisan and hardly fair and objective as the OccupyGhana leaders have profusely maintained.
Objective and neutral OccupyGhana isn’t. It is opportunistic. It is a shill, a mouthpiece for the ruling NPP as evidenced by its glaring failure to criticize Nana’s administration for policy misteps.
Suffice it to say that OccupyGhana keeps its guns silent when it comes to Nana. Its claims to have the interest of Ghanaians at heart are fictitious, blatant lies.
Note that in its criticism of the military agreement not once did it mention the NPP. This is in sharp contrast to the days of the Mahama administration when OccupyGhana was almost always in the headlines for its persistent and vile criticism of the NDC.
We all recall the daily demonstrations it organized in partnership with likeminded pressure groups in the year leading to the elections. They were all calculated to highlight the alleged shortcomings of the NDC.
Every policy enacted by Mahama was pounced on, unfairly scrutinized and crucified. Remember how OccupyGhana raked Mahama over the coal about granting refuge to the Gitmo Two?
By the by, it is profoundly discouraging that a pressure group, that was founded with the sole purpose of fighting for the ordinary Ghanaian has become so partisan and embarrassingly selective in its criticism of public officials. This fact is not lost on Ghanaians.
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