Gideon Ahiadu Writes: Hypocrisy Hindering Ghana’s Development?
In the 2013 Presidential Election Petition, Lawyer Akoto Ampaw was a member of the legal team for Nana Akufo Addo, the petitioner and flagbearer of the opposition NPP.
It is worth noting that in the 2020 Presidential Election Petition, the same legal practitioner, Mr. Akoto Ampaw, happened to be the lead Counsel for Nana Akufo Addo, the second defendant.
In the few couple of days, Lawyer Akoto Ampaw and his cohorts in the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), Legal fraternity, and Academia have been in the news overtly for reasons that can be ascribed to the Anti-LGBTQ+ and its related issues.
It is trite knowledge that Mr. Akoto Ampaw is the lawyer for the president of Ghana, and Mr. Ampaw’s position on LGBTQ+ is increasingly becoming known, just as the position of the president is largely known. “Homosexuality is bound to happen”. According to the president. Is it not curious that following the president’s unconvincing pronouncement on the legalization or otherwise of homosexuality in Ghana, his lawyer, Mr. Akoto Ampaw and his cartel have staged a legal banter and a diabolic campaign seeking to promote such an act which is abhorred by Ghanaians?
It is not only irrevocably baffling and incomprehensible, but also scandalous and irritating, how the president’s lawyer has mounted spirited opposition to the Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill currently before Ghana’s Parliament.
It cannot be the case that neither the president of the republic of Ghana nor his office is unaware of how the president’s lawyer is so fixated on getting the Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill withdrawn from Parliament. Why is he seeking to thwart the efforts being made by parliament to put together a comprehensive legal framework to criminalize LGBTQ and its related activities?
The president, H.E. Nana Akufo Addo, must as a matter of urgency, make public, his position on the tussle between his lawyer, Akoto Ampaw, and Ghana’s Parliament. The president must publicly dissociate himself from his lawyer’s primitive agenda, if he so does not support same.
What does Mr. Ampaw envisage would happen should the bill be passed into law? Why is he fiercely questioning the propriety of the Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill and also contending that same is defective? Whose interest is he seeking to protect?
The hypocritical media outlets have taken solace in editorial discretion, and would never endeavour to ask the critical questions. The media houses that have so far engaged Mr. Akoto Ampaw have only considered him as a citizen who is guaranteed the right by the constitution to persue the uncultured and primitive agenda that has been commenced by him, but not as the president’s lawyer.
Mr. Ampaw must reckon and be told in clear language that his actions cast aspersions on the president, his chief client, and that the president can never be delinked and absorbed from such uncultured, shameful, and unfortunate development.
If Mr. Akoto Ampaw were H.E. former President Mahama’s lawyer, some corrupt and hypocritical media outlets and their journalists would engage in their usual modus operandi. The battle lines would have been drawn. They would have put on their reasoning caps. The mappings, relations, correlations, linkages and the lines of best fit would have been drawn, ostensibly to drag the enviable former president into the LGBTQ+ discourse.
Indeed, this has corroborated the long held ascertion that the NDC cannot “fight” and win the NPP in the Media and the Judiciary, not because the NDC lack the competent human resources, but for plethora of some covert reasons.
Therefore, l impress on the NDC to invest heavily in setting up vibrant media outlets and Information Centers and resource fully, the few that are aligned to the party across the country, should power return to the NDC in 2024. No political party survives with wack and wobbling media outlets.
The NDC government must also appoint more judges to fill up the courts- from lower courts to the Supreme court.
My opinions and are subject to criticism.
Source: Bestghananews.com
