This country is puzzling. People are still talking about the tweet matter....aaba! Havent we got much more important stuff to do? And what frightens me the most is the confidence with which people make bold, sweeping, assertions without the least effort to research or reflect on their position. Some Ghana people will chest-thump like they actually have bothered to check their facts, yet probe a little and you will find that the person is merely assuming or speculating. Dont know the number of times I have read this week that if the tweet had come from a Ghanaian diplomats account in a European or American country, the diplomat would have been expelled by now. This is manifestly false. Everyone knows that in the US, for instance, countries that are critical of America frequently use their diplomats as their public channels of grievance. No diplomat has been expelled because they have passed critical comments regarding US policy. In fact, the rules governing diplomatic behavior are carefully spelt out in the Vienna Convention. And unless a diplomat is in breach of these rules, democratic states rarely expel envoys accredited to them. For example, the Ambassador of El Salvador to the US, Zamora, frequently calls US Congressional officials ignorant, among other such choice observations. Venezuelan Ambassador Herrera has been a thorough and frequent critic of the US. None of these people had been expelled for their comments. Of course there are times when Western envoys in Africa go overboard, case in point: the tendency of successive UK High Commissioners in Kenya to publicly allege corruption against senior members of the Kenyan government. But that is not what we are talking about here. In this case, the Embassy has even denied that it had any intention to convey criticism. So what is this plenty fuss about, really?
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 13:09:21 +0000
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