The ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) government under President John Dramani Mahama is not only contending with brutish ‘domestic’ opposition as many would have thought, but formidable external forces operating covertly to make it unpopular, The aL-hAJJ intelligence has gathered.
Unknown to members of the ruling party and the general citizenry, the Americans, British and Ghana’s development partners including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), peeved at the country’s decision to stubbornly stick to its self-reliant economic stabilization program dubbed “Homegrown Policies," are doing everything humanly possible to see the back of the Mahama administration.
As veteran journalist and social commentator, Kwesi Pratt puts it succinctly, the Mahama administration’s success with the “homegrown” policy, which is also geared towards reducing the nation’s dependence on imports (mainly from the West), will not only become a model for the rest of Africa and beyond but will also go to strengthen Ghana’s economy to better the lives of the people.
This, many foreign governments, mainly from the West and some international institutions are not comfortable with, hence are plotting to make the Mahama government unpopular and not re-elected come 2016.
President John Mahama himself has confirmed being aware of these wicked plots when he told an assembly of national house of chiefs members in Kumasi last week that Ghana’s development partners have left the West African cocoa-producing nation in the lurch, at a time when their assistance is desperately needed.
“It is in challenging times that one needs their friends. Unfortunately, our development partners have not been as responsive to our homegrown fiscal stabilisation policy as I would have hoped,” Mahama told the chiefs.
Adding; “We will begin to feel the effects of economic recovery by the end of this year…, we however must learn to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. It is in challenging times that one needs their friends.”
And it is in fulfillment of this sinister goal that the US embassy in Accra was last week exposed to be neck deep in crude political tactics to dent the image of the Ghanaian government locally and internationally.
But, as if by an act of God to expose the ‘evil’ intensions and the formidable forces the Americans and their Western cohorts have arrayed against the Mahama government, the American embassy was exposed when its twitter handle flippantly and uncouthly retorted to a twitter comment by the Ghanaian President.
As characteristic of President Mahama, who loves keeping in touch with the citizenry via social media, his recent tweet “as a people, we have had to make sacrifices. I wish to assure you that the results of these sacrifices would begin to show very soon,” earned him an uncouth response from an ‘anonymous staff’ operating in the American embassy.
In a direct riposte to the president’s tweet, and to expose the underbelly of the US Embassy as enmeshed in hate campaign against the President and the NDC government, its official twitter handle stated “And what sacrifices are you making? Don't tell me that pay cut.”
This sparked media frenzy especially on twitter and facebook with calls by well-meaning Ghanaians led by a member of government, Mr. Ras Mubarak, on the Foreign Affairs Minister to summon the US Ambassador for questioning.
But to the utter surprise of Ghanaians and to further expose officials of the embassy as leading the harsh attacks on the president, the mission tweeted with a flimsy excuse that “The earlier errant tweet was a private message mistakenly sent out on our account. The views expressed in no way reflect the views of the United States Government or the U.S. Embassy.”
The Embassy also said steps have been taken “to ensure that all of our employees fully understand their responsibility toward carefully managing our public outreach through social media.”
“We have apologized to the president and we offer an apology to the Ghanaian people. Our staff mixed a personal handle with that of the embassy’s,” the Mission stressed.
But may Ghanaians have questioned the explanation demanding; “if the embassy claims a staff mistakenly sent out a private tweet with its account, it means officials of the embassy have disguised themselves and have been denigrating the president and the NDC government.”
Foreign Affairs Minister, Hannah Tetteh was less diplomatic either. In a cheeky response to the embassy’s explanations, she tweeted “the tweet was public & associated with your twitter handle. It was not a private/personal account.”
The behavior of the US mission is not strange as that has been the modus operandi of the Americans in almost all countries across the world.
Julian Paul Assange’s leaked cables in what has become known as “Wikileaks reports” are classic examples of how the Americans brazenly abuse diplomatic niceties.