A member of the Nana Akufo-Addo Communication Team for Election 2012, John Boadu has rubbished the article written by a Vice-Chairman of the ruling National Democratic Congress, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah which sought to condemn the NPP’s position on the Cote D’Ivoire political crisis and also side with President Mills’ answer on committing of troops to Ivory Coast.
John Boadu believes CEO of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) penned down the article to simply make his relevance count since he has been away from the political scene for quite some time.
Married to an Ivoirian named Simone, the former flagbearer aspirant of the NDC waded into the Ivorian political impasse debate when he denounced flagbearer of the NPP, Nana Akufo-Addo’s remarks he made at a recently held press conference to state the party’s position on the Ivorian situation, accusing him of promoting a George W. Bush style of “democracy-at-the-barrel-of-a-gun” policy.
The former Communications Minister in the erstwhile Rawlings regime accused Nana Akufo-Addo of mounting 2012 election campaign on a radical new non-African doctrine. He described the NPP flagbearer as a man who has shown a complete lack of balanced judgment and equipoise in foreign affairs and called on former President Kufuor to re-educate his party’s leadership on how to apply wisdom in commenting on the Ivoirian political crisis.
According to him, the NPP is telling Ghanaians that its new radical policy is rather what has been truly the mainstay of Ghanaian foreign policy practice.
But speaking in an interview on Citi News, John Boadu, who is the NPP’s spokesperson on the Cote D’Ivoire political crisis, rebutted that the article exposes Dr. Spio-Garbrah’s ignorance of the issue at hand. He counseled CTO Chief Executive to return home if he wants to be an active participant in Ghana’s politics and also acquaint himself properly with the issue before he makes any pronouncements.
“He is not in this country so he is not aware of all the discussions that has gone on and all the flip flopping which led to the coming of the Prime Minister of Kenya, Odinga to rationalize government’s position,” he emphasized.
He questioned if Dr. Spio Garbrah is aware that President Mills’ apparent volte-face statement on the Cote D’Ivoire crisis led to a lot of uneasiness among the diplomatic community, and that it had to take the Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga to personally come down to know at first hand, the president’s real position following his flip-flopping answers.
“There have been a lot of misconceptions and misinterpretations of government’s position on this Cote D’Ivoire crisis but Spio is not aware of these developments….he is also not aware that the position that Odinga came to rationalize has been the position that Nana Addo has been espousing over the period,” he added.
John Boadu urged Spio Garbrah to advise his government (NDC) not to speak with ‘one mouth from different directions’ and stop giving confusing signals to everybody on the issue.