Senior Vice President of IMANI-Africa, Kofi Bentil, asserts that President Akufo-Addo should not have intervened in ‘The Convention’ event organized by the New Force.
According to Mr. Bentil, as the event was a private one, there was no reason for the Jubilee House to interfere with such a program by canceling it.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, he expressed the belief that the program posed no threat, adding that this uproar and attendant embarrassment could have been easily avoided.
“The President should not go anywhere near this program. This is someone arranging a meeting and then someone [from the Presidency] decides that they are going to cancel the meeting for very bad, wrong reasons,” he said on January 13.
He called for an investigation into the matter, pointing out that the letter issued was mandated by the presidency, and he wondered if all letters issued by the presidency had the proper authority.
“Our presidency sometimes seems to issue things, and you don’t know who is singing what and that for me, is more worrying than the event itself,” Mr. Bentil said.
According to him, that is more worrying than the event itself.
His comments were prompted by Professor Agyemang Duah’s assertion on the show, stating that President Akufo-Addo should have addressed the cancellation of ‘The Convention.’
Prof. Duah emphasised that the President was expected to make a pronouncement and denounce the cancellation if he did not approve or knew about it, stating that persons behind it had embarrassed him as the head of state.
“If it were the case that somebody did that, then somebody must take the fall to protect the president. In our governance system, you don’t get anybody taking the fall to protect a higher person like the president,” Prof. Agyemang Duah stated.
On the back of this, Mr Bentil criticised the cancellation of the New Force event organized by Nana Kwame Bediako and disagreed with attempts to hinder his political ambitions.
“He says he’s our salvation and he’s here to save us, let’s take it as it is, he’s wearing a Voodoo mask and he says we shouldn’t be afraid of him, let’s take it like that. He’s going to inject some kind of levity into the political campaign.
“What we should not do is to deploy serious state resources to try and cancel his event. The cancellation is more news than the event and I think we should be spearing the use of state resources,” he said.
The Senior Vice President of IMANI-Africa emphasised that the cancellation of the event was entirely unnecessary and urged the government to allow Mr. Bediako to proceed with his plans.
“In the scheme of things politically and nationally, I really do not think that this rises to the kind of event that requires presidential intervention. This is a young man who is injecting a different dimension into our politics, just let him,” said Mr. Bentil.