Spinning Moon�s Diplomatic Niceties

Alassane Ouattara has formally taken over the reins of government in Ivory Coast, much to the disappointment of a few African leaders, a handful, whose support for the disgraced Laurent Gbagbo was household knowledge. When the then embattled Gbagbo showered accolades on President Mills for, according to him, being a wise man, he was not ambivalent. He could not have described his Ghanaian pal otherwise, given the incomprehensible support he drew from him. Some top Ghanaian officials surreptitiously graced the illegal swearing-in ceremony of the stubborn Gbagbo in Abidjan, when the international community including the UN and even ECOWAS all asked him to cede power to the winner. The confusion created by our President�s ambivalence over the Ivorian political impasse peaked when President Mills uttered his now infamous �dzi wo fie asem� gaffe. With the other presidential claimant now firmly in charge, the international community, especially the UN, must ensure that the man is shielded from any covert and destabilizing manoeuvres from the country�s closest neighbor, Ghana, which is now home to many Ivorian dissidents. And what better way of ensuring this than employing diplomatic niceties as did Mr. Ban ki Moon. These are heady days in the history of the Mills presidency, as he fields motley challenges not from without but within his political household. With his colleagues pissing in with reckless abandon, a reed provided by Ban ki Moon has been conveniently given a necessary twist. Had the spinners managed Moon�s standard diplomatic niceties with their heads on, they would have been saved the embarrassment of messing up the spinning assignment. The pedigree and integrity of Mr. Moon as a diplomat would have been questioned, had he really described his host, when he landed in Accra, as the best African leader, vis-�-vis management of the Ivorian crisis. It is as though the diplomatic gaffe caused by Mills never happened and that Riley Odinga did not even come to Accra to find out for himself what the whole ambivalence was about. We are also aware about how Mills� gaffe compelled ECOWAS to send a delegation to assure the EU and other international bodies about their stand that Gbagbo cede power. For want of a better description of Mills� handling of the Ivorian challenge, we can state that it was anything but helpful to the demands of those edgy days in the history of ECOWAS. If President Ouattara disregarded Mills� �dzi wo fie asem� remark and dispatched his Prime Minister with an invitation to the Ghanaian President to grace his investiture, it was to show a better sense of diplomatic maturity. It was not about a certain rare support given by President Mills who would have rather Laurent Gbagbo stayed on for whatever reasons. The presence of Ghanaian soldiers in the Ivory Coast is a UN arrangement predating the assumption of office by President Mills. The efforts by Deputy Information Minister Baba Jamal to make it look like our soldiers are in that country at the gesture of President Mills is far from the truth. Ghanaian soldiers will continue to serve the UN, even after the exit of President Mills. Some Ivorian elements currently sheltering in Ghana cannot pass for good ambassadors of their country, dreaming as they are about the possibility of destabilizing the new government at home. President Mills can gain credit if he gets his security agents to keep an eye on them. Until he does that, let him stop pretending that he played a certain role in shepherding Ivory Coast from the doldrums.