Update, July 21th 2009-
Gaddafi cancels visit due to ‘exigencies’. The visit is now tentatively set for September 2009.
Update, July 19th 2009-
Gaddafi to be crowned King of Kings in Accra
Information picked up by The Ghanaian Chronicle at press time last night indicates that the Libyan leader, Brother Muamur Al Gaddafi would be crowned King of Kings in Africa, next week in a ceremony in Accra, by chiefs in the West African sub-region.
Article:
July 17th 2009
NewsRescue- Buzz in Ghana as Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s leader, and the elected chairman of the 53-nation African Union will be visiting on Thursday, July 23rd 2009.
Gaddafi is expected to discuss issues of African security and economic stability as well as UN representation, with the (3rd)President of Ghana, John Atta-Mills.
This past Wednesday at the 15th summit of the Non Aligned Nations (NAM), a group of about 118 ‘developing’ Nations, Gaddafi described the UN Security council as a tool of terrorism, and pledged to demand a seat for the African continent, presently unrepresented at the council.
He is quoted to have said:
The Security Council is terrorism,
The UN body does not represent us, it is monopolized by a few countries that are permanent members.
This represents a danger toward international peace. We have been harmed (by) all sorts of harm from the Security Council, it has become a sword over our necks.
Opposition to US
Muammar Gaddafi with his “Africa for the Africans” mantra, is recognized by all as a very strong pro-African leader who does not mince his words and has maintained a steady cause for the growth and development of Africa via self reliance, trade interdependence and collective security by African Nations. He has been pushing for a ‘United States of Africa’, to further reach this goal. Gaddafi continues to fight against what he calls: ‘Western powers and companies, sucking African blood.’
Related: How The IMF-World Bank and Structural Adjustment Program(SAP) Destroyed Africa
He has staunchly opposed US ambitions to establish the AFRICOM military bases in Africa, and has urged others to echo his opposition: In 2007, the 28-member states of CEN-SAD (the Community of Sahel-Saharan States), a regional economic community funded mostly by Libya, issued a communiqué stating that it “flatly refuses the installation of any military command or any foreign armed presence.”[1]
Gaddafi also strongly kicked for the UN small arms embargo, which the United States alone vetoed against. Small arms are responsible for over 90% of deaths in tribal wars and conflicts in Africa. The US has been criticized for singly vetoing all UN resolutions and attempts at embargo on this deadly trade.[2]
His visit, shortly after Obama’s visit to the African Nation in his second official visit to Africa, may serve to directly undermine US ambitions in Africa, via Ghana. Gaddafi is known to promote ‘direct democracy’, as against western ‘Multiparty democracy’, which experts say is the root cause of the current global financial crises, and is a system that is too young to determine as a successful system.
Col Gaddafi recently backed up his argument by citing other countries like Kenya, where elections in December 2007 were followed by ethnic killings, and war-torn Somalia.
“We don’t have any political structures [in Africa], our structures are social,” Reuters news agency quotes him as saying.
“Our parties are tribal parties – that is what has led to bloodshed.” [3]
According to a politics expert, Professor Charles Ruthers, the current system of multiparty democracy creates a very unhealthy environment of continuous hatred between opposite party members and amongst the general populace, that is more dangerous to National interest than is the possible success of the system.
Multiparty democracy, also swings blame for administration failures, in effect, creating a platform for the perpetration of atrocities and escaping discipline and retribution for this, by a simple swing of governance from one party to the other. We will recollect that the Obama democratic party won the recent US election due to the global recognition of the Republican party and ex-president G. W. Bush for their illegal invasion of Iraq. Multiparty democracy in his words enables such atrocities to go on unchecked as the public view is simply diverted to the other party, and justice never served.
‘Rawlings Revolution’, not democracy saved Ghana
Ghana has been proclaimed as an exemplary African Nation by the media due to it’s democracy. This however is not very true or accurate. The relative success of Ghana as compares to other African Nations of similar dispensation is not due to democracy, but rather due to the Military ‘Rawlings Revolution’ on 31st December 1981.
Ghana, like its counterpart Nations, was decaying in the annals of corruption as a failed post colonial state. Western Multiparty Democracy in Ghana was not helping, as- secondary to the the colonial occupation of African Nations, and the Slave trade forced on Africans via western superior war guns, leading to their ability to sell their brothers, a corrupted generation of Africans prevailed.
And as military or democratic leaders, these worthless people who the western colonialists handed power to, could not lead the already failed states. Failed states created by sudden combination’s or separations of territories (usually of incompatible tribes or tribes not yet naturally ready to coexist, compounded with unfair power and resource sharing by the colonialists among the combined territories) shortly before carving out the African nations and handing over power.
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What rescued Ghana according to experts was Jerry Rawlings’ military take over and his ruthless reform revolution, which included the prosecution of all Ghanaian’s who could not account for their source of wealth. Indeed it was so tough that piles of money were seen around Ghana, as people dumped their money in fear of being prosecuted if unable to account for their monetary possessions.
Indeed Rawlings on many platforms professed his hatred for multiparty democracy because of the past destructive years that multiparty systems had brought to Ghana (i.e the Busia days). [4]
And his party candidate, John Atta-Mills, the current president of Ghana can be expected to have discussions on this and other aspects of leadership in Africa with Gaddafi during his Thursday visit.
Ghanaian multiparty democracy already gone bloody
Corruption has been swiftly returning to the Ghana political scene. Last week, during President Obama’s visit, a certain alleged $5000 Vodafone company bribe of Ghanaian members of parliament topped the news on Ghana radio stations, and other discussions of
bribes coming in from Nigerian governors were also hot topics. The last election was nothing but terrible as multiparty political hatred and strife was predominant and the deposed president threatened to bring in neighboring Togolese soldiers to take over the country in event of his loss. Bloody clashes broke out and many were injured or killed in the election turmoil, and with the expected increase in Ghana’s wealth with the oil that has been found, analysts predict the not uncommon chaos of multiparty democracy to soon plague Ghana, and Ghana’s fall from the Rawling revolution brought on fame.
Election violence excerpt:
Charred remains of houses, walls riddled with bullets, and burnt cars and are talismans of last week’s violence in the Northern Region’s capital of Tamale. Violence erupted following a shooting incident on 31 August that abruptly ended a political rally organized by the ruling New Patriotic Party.
A 12-hour curfew is currently in force… …Affected by the violence was Alhaji Mahama Jeboni, an opposition party chairman for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who is based in Tamale.
His 30-year-old daughter, Sayakulu Mahama Jeboni told IRIN, “The attackers asked my father to choose between his life and his properties. There were about a hundred people all armed. They were arguing whether to burn the houses first or my father’s commercial vehicles. They set fire to all of his eight cars.” She said the flames razed their three homes to the ground. “Everything was burnt, all our possessions, possessions dating back to one hundred years. We have nothing left,” Jeboni told IRIN. [5]
For now, Ghanaian’s are very optimistic and anticipatory of Muammar Gaddafi’s historic visit, and hope he can shore up security risk issues that Ghana expects to arise with the newly discoverd wealth status, as well as discuss good and stable systems of governance for African nations and the continent as a whole.
