Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, Member of Parliament (MP) for Klottey Korle believes President John Dramani Mahama’s invitation and subsequent appointment of an Envoy to The Alliance of Sahel States is to send a strong message to the entire ECOWAS block that there is still room to get back to the discussion table to see how to mend bridges among ourselves.
She said Ghana and Burkina Faso, the two neighbours have had long standing close ties especially during the period of Jerry Rawlings and Thomas Sankara, so trying to cement that relationship is important to dealing with the insecurity situation at the northern parts of Ghana and Burkina Faso.
The Klottey Korle MP emphasized that the two countries are not just neighbours but also share family ties as hence any disturbance in any of the countries forces people to find refuge in the other, as peaceful co-existence is thus very crucial and beneficial to both countries.
President Mahama’s move, she said it even more relevant as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has itself opened its doors for the three countries to return to the bloc despite the formation of The Alliance of Sahel States (AES).
According to her to extricate oneself from an economic community such as ECOWAS or any other is not as simple as having formed a new position of saying you don’t belong; as there are a lot of things that affect the nationals of the various nation states that are part of the community that have far reaching implications beyond the political including economic, and socio-cultural implications.
“I believe that what we saw in terms of the invitations of the head of State of Burkina Faso as well as the appointment of Rt. Colonel Gbevlo Lartey as an envoy to those countries is a strong message that Ghana understands that the struggle towards self-determination, the struggle towards economic empowerment is not as linear as we like to say it is; and in so doing it is an acknowledgement that there are other ways by which one can actually reach out to our brothers and sisters in other countries to re-mend broken bridges”, she stated.
Dr Zanetor said the invitation is also probably to say that “we are not casting you away; you are still part of us and there is room to have conversation on how we come together” since the ultimate goal of having a bloc is the empowerment of our people and not personal issues either as a head of state or whatever, but for the greater good of the various nations particularly the vulnerable. More so, it is important in making sure that we are not making our countries more vulnerable, giving the fact that incidents of terrorist armed groups and violent extremism is prevalence and knocking at our doors.
“We cannot sit here as a country holding our credentials of democratic rule for as long as we have, and feel that we can live in isolation. We have borders that are porous among other things; so we need to have ways in which we can bridge the gap to decrease our risk but of course make sure that we’re trying to create some greater cohesion in the sub-region; so I believe it was positive”, she emphasized.
Dominic Shirimori/Ghanamps.com
