“Will ‘Ghana First’ protests threaten a U.S military agreement?”

Will ‘Ghana First’ protests threaten a U.S military agreement?

Assessment:

There are two elements to be discussed when analyzing this article: the source and the author. The Washington Post is a news source initially founded in Washington D.C. by Stilson Hutchins, who was a Democrat when the broadsheet newspaper was founded. Later, he sold The Washington Post to another Democrat. Today, the news source is believed to have a left-wing bias. As for the author, Rachel Sigman is an assistant professor specialized in African studies. These two aspects confirms the reason why the source (1) neither defend nor attack the update of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)–they want to  both defend their country and avoid agreeing with the exploitation of others; (2) makes a more deep historical analysis of the issue.

Summary:

The article talks about the update that the US wants to do to the Status of Forces Agreement of 1998. However, Ghana’s opposition is not willing to accept the terms of this update; they argue that this will “compromise Ghana’s sovereignty.” Therefore, people are protesting against the measure. The article presents the issue, a historical analysis of it, and a opinion about what will potentially happen.

Analysis:

The article starts highlighting the importance of the agreement for the US, but it also emphasizes the attention that needs to be given to both countries’ interests; it concludes that  they are “updating their SOFA to better reflect the current range of bilateral exercises and assistance.” It is interesting that the article do not focus on what the agreement establishes but, instead, in why the opposition is protesting against it. With this position, they aim at showing that the problem is not the agreement itself, but the idea of gathering people to agree with the opposition and give credibility to this party. In the section “In other words, it’s all about internal politics,” the article verifies its point that foreign issues sometimes is much more related to internal issues. That way, the protests are only a way to make people support NDC, which confirms the slogan of  The Washington Post: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Finally, the article ends with a explicit opinion from the author, based on her study of the case. The brief opinion is meant to give hope to the agreement, as well as to, again, show that the agreement is not actually the root of what is discussed.

Opinion:

It is expected from the opposition of a government that there will be different strategies to gain credibility and power. Yet, that is not the only purpose of the protests. People are at least a little aware of how the agreement can negatively affect the country. They fear new kinds of colonialism every day, and this could be one type. That is, even though there is an interest in increasing a party’s credibility, there is also a need to reaffirm Ghana’s sovereignty in their decisions related to military powers.

Maria Julia Bortolucci.