What “Flaunts” Diplomatic Protocol, Mr. Adu-Otu?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

I read Mr. Yaw Asare Adu-Otu’s open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron with the disdainful snort that it more than deserves – actually, the letter was addressed to the Ghana High Commissioner to Great Britain (See “Re: Nana Akuffo[sic]-Addo and David Cameron Meeting” MyJoyOnline.com 11/16/11). In the letter, the writer presumes to lecture the British Prime Minister about whom and when to meet any prominent Ghanaian leader and/or politician that Mr. Cameron so chooses, particularly the country’s main opposition leader, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. And the sole grounds on which Mr. Adu-Otu registers his rather bitter complaint is the fact that Mr. Cameron’s meeting with Nana Akufo-Addo comes barely a year before Election 2012.
Anyway, the writer does not identify in what capacity and at whose express behest he composed such tripe; and so it is quite difficult to deal with it as anything more than the pathetic handiwork of a National Democratic Congress hack who is livid with raw envy and is also diplomatically challenged. Which is why Mr. Adu-Otu urges the Ghana High Commissioner to Britain to dispatch a note to Number Ten Downing Street, protesting the “sovereign” right of the British Prime Minister to meet and/or confer with whichever leader of any Commonwealth nation – be that leader a ruler or the latter’s opponent – that Mr. Cameron so decides.
And, indeed, if the writer half-appreciated anything worthwhile about diplomatic protocol, Mr. Adu-Otu would first have advised President John Evans Atta-Mills to channel his displeasure with the British Prime Minister’s decision to tie foreign aid to the protection of the human rights of homosexuals through the British High Commissioner to Ghana, rather than rudely and crudely using the patently undiplomatic occasion of a press conference to cast innuendoes and volley verbal abuse at the leader of a country with longstanding diplomatic and intimate historical relationship with the people of Ghana.
It is also rather amusing the both Messrs. Adu-Otu and Atta-Mills would have audiences believe that, indeed, Ghana has a right to instruct Britain on how to dispense its foreign-aid resources while, on the other hand, Ghana’s former colonial mistress and tutor is conceded absolutely no right to decide which Ghanaian leader Britain chooses to engage in a constructive dialogue, particularly on the fundamental question of human rights, which Ghana’s ruling National Democratic Congress has more than amply demonstrated that it has no purposeful interest in whatsoever.
By the way, Mr. Adu-Otu needs to learn the proper usage of Ghana’s official language of business and academic discourse before presuming to lecture his Oxbridge-educated intellectual better on precisely what constitutes diplomatic propriety and/or decorum. Besides, precisely what does Mr. Adu-Otu mean by the following statement: “Any action [taken] by the British that appears to give unwarranted official recognition to Akufo-Addo posing as the representative face and voice of Ghana flaunts [sic] diplomatic protocol”?
Does the preceding, for example, mean that as the veritable leader of the 49.77% of Ghanaian citizens who voted for him in Election 2008, Nana Akufo-Addo has absolutely no right to represent the legitimate concerns of his constituency on the critical question of human rights and continental African political culture? Come again, Mr. Adu-Otu.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].
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