Wonder Victor Kutor has defended Ghana’s decision to receive deportees from the United States, emphasising that the government acted correctly on substantive grounds but should have followed proper procedural steps.
The Member of the National Executive Committee of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had this to say during an interview on Prime Insight on Joy Prime;
“The mere title of a document as a memorandum of understanding is not what matters; it’s the content. But if that memorandum of understanding appears to be an agreement, in fact, it ought to go to Parliament. When it comes to issues of law, I won’t just be speaking as a politician; I want to stick to the law.”
He maintained that, while receiving the deportees was not wrong, the government should have ensured that Parliament was involved.
“Receiving the deportees, there’s no problem. But I thought that the procedure ought to have been reconsidered. Parliament has been on recess, but they can always under urgency recall Parliament and discuss this issue. I don’t think the government should have a problem going to Parliament to rectify it,” he added.
In a related development, International Relations Expert Prof. Vladmir Antwi-Danso has raised concerns over Ghana’s decision to accept 14 deportees of West African origin from the United States, questioning the transparency, burden-sharing, and accountability of the arrangement.
Speaking to 3news, the scholar dismissed claims that Ghana’s involvement was purely humanitarian.
“It is never true that in such diplomatic relations, you go on humanitarian grounds and you gain nothing. Even on humanitarian grounds there is something promised.
“There is no way any relationship is made on the grounds of one side winning and the other side losing. So there must be some promise given us by the Americans before we accepted to bring them here,” he stressed.
Prof. Antwi-Danso also questioned why Ghana, rather than ECOWAS as a regional body, was singled out to shoulder the responsibility.
“Again my beef is on the question of they are West Africans, so we were humanitarian enough to bring them. Why should it be the case that America’s immigration problem should be the problem of Ghana and not the problem of ECOWAS? Why did America not negotiate with ECOWAS and negotiated with Ghana?”
