Information Minister, Mustapha Hamid wants Ghanaians to accept the apology rendered by the country’s High Commissioner to South Africa, George Ayisi-Boateng and move on.
According to Mr. Hamid, being made to apologise and retract his divisive statements, is enough punishment to him and therefore, his action does not warrant anymore stiffer retribution.
The High Commissioner last week issued an apology to the public days after he told members of the students’ wing of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) that he will put the interests of the party’s loyalists above those of other Ghanaians in the discharge of his duties as Ambassador.
On Sunday, former President John Mahama also joined a chorus of calls for Mr Ayisi-Boateng’s removal.
The former President urged President Nana Akufo-Addo to show leadership by showing Ayisi-Boateng the exit.
Speaking on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM Tuesday, the Minister said even though he disagreed with Mr. Ayisi-Boateng, he does not think Ayisi-Boateng “meant what he was saying hook, line and sinker.”
“What he [Ayisi-Boateng] said is indefensible…he was wrong, wrong, wrong [and] wrong,” Mr. Hamid told Kojo Yankson, host of the programme.
But he wants the matter to end after the High Commissioner apologised and most importantly, it is the position of the government that “the wrong that he committed does not warrant a sack as others are saying.”
He emphasised his earlier comments made on Asempa FM’s Ekosii Sen programme Monday afternoon, that President Nana Akufo-Addo has accepted the apology and has decided to give Mr Ayisi-Boateng a second chance to represent Ghana in South Africa.
Reacting to former President John Mahama’s call for his successor to dismiss the top diplomat, Mr. Hamid said the former leader was first to fail the moral test by ignoring a petition endorsed by over a hundred journalists asking him to sanction his Director of Communications, Stan Dogbe.
“The fact is that he was president when journalists in our country took signatures to ask him to dismiss his Director of Communications [Stan Dogbe] because he had damaged a reporter’s recorder and disrespected journalists; he [Mahama] ignored the petition to dismiss Stan Dogbe,” the Minister said.
He reasoned that “This grade of punishment [apology and retraction] is commensurate with the statement” maintaining his position that “[with] this statement quite frankly just an apology suffices.”
Source: Myjoyonline