[ 2014-04-19 ]

Bernard Mornah rubbishes 'biased' EPA forum
Stern critic of the Economic Partnership Agreement
(EPA), Bernard Mornah, says last Thursday's forum
to discuss the controversial trade agreement was a
just a media gimmick.

According to him, goings on at the forum leave him
without a shred of doubt that “government is
hell bent on signing the EPA”.

Government, under the auspices of the Ministry of
Trade held a stakeholders' forum on Thursday April
17 on the European Union (EU) conceived Economic
Partnership Agreement.

The EPAs allow Ghana and other African Caribbean
Pacific countries who sign it, to have 100 percent
access to the European market, except for rice and
sugar, while EU countries will have 75 percent
access to the Ghanaian market duty free and quota
free.

The stakeholder's forum, which saw the heckling of
Mr Claude Maerten, EU representative in Ghana by
civil society groups opposed to the agreement, was
organised to tease out issues in the EPA.

It was aimed at providing an avenue for
stakeholders including religious leaders, civil
society organisations, non-governmental
organisations as well as those in academia, to
share their views and opinion which would inform
government's position moving forward.

The General Secretary of the People's National
Convention (PNC) pointed to the selection of Mr
Sidney Casely-Hayford as facilitator of the event,
as one of the biggest flaws of the event.

He said Mr Casely-Hayford's selection as moderator
of the forum was the height of bias because he
(Casely-Hayford) "has defended the EPAs to his
marrow".

"This is somebody who is totally committed that
Ghana should auction under the EPA...He came to
give a presentation in support of EPA and now was
to facilitate the processes. So he decides who
should talk, who should not talk and for how
long," he noted .

He said he was therefore not alarmed by Mr
Casely-Hayford's style of moderation -- explaining
that when someone spoke in favour of signing the
agreement, the moderator added his own input by
"summarsing" key points but when someone spoke in
opposition he made no summary of key points.

Speaking as a panel on Radio Gold's "Alhaji and
Alhaji" news analysis programme Saturday, he said
the situation was so bad that he had to personally
tell Mr Casely-Hayford at a point to stop his bias
since the forum was aimed at gathering inputs to
inform Ghana's position on the trade agreement.

"That is the extent to which we have reduced
ourselves. We organised this thing just to..
placate -- to say that Ghana had a forum", he
lamented.

He also notes that although the newspaper adverts
of the forum indicated that Mr Joe Abbey and Dr
Yaw Graham would be debating the pros and cons of
the trade agreement, that is not what happened at
the event.

He said was "shocked" when Minister of Trade,
Haruna Iddrisu, and other guests of honour set the
discussion rolling by "eulogising" the EPA without
a single allusion to some of the negatives being
highlighted by civil society groups.

"The worst of all in this presentation that I
witnessed from these two Ministers [current trade
Minister and a former trade Minister] is that in
the discussion on the EPA, all they talked about
was the goods in trade [the export component of
the trade agreement].

But Mr Mornah states that the EPA is broader than
exports.

He notes that when Ghana signs the EPA,
government's procurement would be libreralised to
the detriment of local goods.

"How can the President [John Mahama] promote
made-in Ghana goods when we have liberalised
procurement?", he asked.

The only way Ghana can produce and sustain its
troubled rice industry for instance is for
government to decide that state institutions
(schools) must buy made-in Ghana rice, according
to Mr Mornah.

"But under the liberalised procurement in this
EPA, the government cannot do that", he notes.

Source - MyjoyOnline

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