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Nana Addo must come clean on Gitmo issue - Kwesi Pratt

The Managing Editor of the Insight Newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr said communication from the camp of Ghana’s main opposition party on the issue has been contradictory.

 

The 2016 flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo has been charged to tell Ghanaians the truth about his involvement in the decision to bring the two Guantanamo bay detainees to Ghana.

The Managing Editor of the Insight Newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr said communication from the camp of Ghana’s main opposition party on the issue has been contradictory therefore, it is imperative for them to get their story straight.

Since the arrival of the Guantanamo bay detainees in Ghana a few weeks ago, there has been public uproar with some Ghanaians and opposition parties asking government to return them back to the United States.

After weeks of public pressure on Nana Addo to state his stance on the matter after rumours circulated that the NPP flagbearer was consulted by the US before the detainees were brought into the country.

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But his spokesperson, Mustapha Hamid dimssied such claims.

Speaking on Radio Gold’s Alhaji and Alhaji on Saturday, Mr. Pratt said Nana Add’s hesitation to speak on the matter is questionable.

“When people called on Nana Addo to state his position on the Gitmo issue, it took a while for him to state his position. There was obviously some hesitation on his part to come public and to make a declaration. Indeed, he came public only after it had been alleged that on two or three occasions that the Americans consulted him and that he gave his approval as an individual – that was when he came public.

“Even when he came public, he did not confirm or deny whether or not he had indeed spoken to the Americans and whether or not he had indeed approved the deal – he didn’t speak on that. He focused his attention on legal and constitutional issues and so on and left it there,” he said.

Mr. Pratt continued saying, “Interestingly, when the allegation was first made, Mustapha Hamid who is spokesperson of Nana Akufo-Addo was the one who responded. Mustapha Hamid denied categorically that nobody had consulted Nana Addo, that Nana Addo had not met the Americans, that this whole thing had come to him as a surprise. The next person to speak was Sir John who said that Nana Addo was consulted but that was six days after the arrival of the detainees…”

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He therefore challenged Nana Addo and the NPP to come clean on the matter.

“Now the question that I want to pose is what is the truth? Was Nana consulted six weeks before the arrival of the detainees? Was he consulted six days before the arrival of the detainees? Was he consulted when the detainees were already in the country? Or was he not consulted at all?” he asked.

According to him, “all of these four, five positions cannot be true. Only one can be true so why are we getting different versions of the same story from the same political party? What is happening? Why can’t they tell us one story?”

He said since Ghanaians including the NPP have always “lambasted government officials for singing from different hymn books on many different occasions…and that this destroys the credibility of government.”

“If we can say this about government, we ought to be able to say same about the opposition. The opposition also needs to deal with us on the basis of credibility,” he added.

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