Former President Rawlings[/caption]
Former President Jerry John Rawlings has added his voice to the many who are pressurizing government to abandon a military cooperation agreement with the United States of America.
The government is expected, under the agreement, to give US military personnel unfettered access to some facilities around the Kotoka International Airport in Accra among other clauses.
The Minority in Parliament, for instance, has taken a position on the agreement and has asked the government to withdraw the agreement the Defence Minister laid in Parliament on Tuesday.
Some security experts who have commented on the issue have aligned with the Minority MPs, fearing the country’s sovereignty could be jeopardised by the agreement.
[caption id="attachment_78754" align="aligncenter" width="608"] File photo[/caption]
Moreover, former President Rawlings, who ruled Ghana as a military leader for over a decade, has drawn the government’s attention to the already discomfort situation in the country, explaining why the agreement is inappropriate for Ghana, a former British colony.
DISCOMFORT
“Ghanaians may love Americans, but not to the extent of living with foreign troops on such a scale. Ghanaians have enough foreigners dominating their economic and social life. “Adding foreign troops to the discomfort would be a bit too much. Ghanaians have felt stateless before in my lifetime. Let’s not go there again,” Mr. Rawlings tweeted on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Minister of Defence Dominic Nitiwul told a press conference on Wednesday that the agreement is a renewal of an existing contract that Ghana signed with the US government in 1998 and was renewed in 2015.CANNOT BACK OUT
He was clear that government would have to go ahead with the agreement because it cannot walk away. He asserted, “We have already signed a 1998 agreement, we have signed the 2015 agreement, and we have already caught ourselves in this net and we cannot back out because this is just a combination of the two agreements.” [caption id="attachment_77198" align="aligncenter" width="605"]