Accra Summit to decide fate of African Union.

By Ebenezer Hanson

Accra, from June 25 to July 3, will be hosting a crucial African Union (AU) Summit in which the fate of the continental body as to its direction will be decided.

The Summit will be finding answers to the question, “what sort of government or system do Africans want to govern and regulate the affairs of the Union?”

“ For sometime, it has become apparent that we need clarity on this fundamental issue to permit us to go ahead to organise the Union more effectively and with greater unity of purpose,” the Foreign Affairs Minister, Hon Nana Akufo-Addo told Parliament when he briefed the House about President Agyekum Kufuor’s State visit to the United Kingdom and other related matters.

Will the Summit opt for a federal government for the Union arriving at an arrangement like a United States of Africa in which one federal constitution will apply to all the states of the Union in the manner of the United States of America? If so, what are the steps that need to be put in place to lead to this?

Or do we want to go along with the premise of the Constitutive Act of the Union, that is to improve the performance of the current arrangement whereby the Union remains essentially an inter-governmental association in which the member states have agreed to be bound in certain matters by the operation of common decisions and institutions or in other words, to go along the lines of the current European Union?

“ Or will the Summit come out with another hitherto unknown form of association which will be the result of the African genius? The answers to these weighty questions are meant to be given here in Accra in July, and it is appropriate in the light of our history that this should be so,” stated Nana Akufo-Addo

According to him, the answers to these questions in themselves have no weight unless they are rooted in the decision and opinion of the people. And therefore it would be wholly wrong for decisions of such magnitude to be taken by leaders in a closed room without the requisite guidance of their peoples. This is why the Assembly in its wisdom in Addis Ababa urged member states to consult urgently with their populations before Accra.

The NPP administration, he said, believes that Parliament is the great and most authoritative debating chamber of the nation and hence the views of this House will enable the body politic and civil society to engage in a meaningful debate on the this “great matter”.

The Accra Summit will also address two other important matters. One is the composition of the Commission of the Union, which is its executive arm. The four-year mandate of its chairperson and commissioners, conferred at the Maputo Summit, comes to an end in Accra in July. Processes have been initiated to resolve this matter.

The formal election of the members of the new Commission will be concluded in Accra, where a replacement for the dynamic Chairperson of the Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, who has declared his intention not to seek re-election, will have to be found.

The second subject is the APRM process which will culminate in the peer review of Algeria, Nigeria, and South Africa at the Accra Summit. The peer review of Ghana, the first to subject itself to the process, has given the process great prestige.

Hon. Nana Akufo-Addo noted with regret that the above positive developments are not the only ones on the agenda of the AU Summit. There are the unresolved conflicts in Somalia, the Darfur region of Sudan, and Cote d’Ivoire.

He observed, “ the renewed fighting in Mogadishu threatens the difficult peace process there and underlines the urgent need of the AU to complete the introduction of its peace-keeping force into Somalia’s complex terrain and to accelerate the political dialogue amongst all the various factions, the successful conclusion of which is the only sure guarantee of a return to normalcy and peace in that very troubled country, ” and described the killings in Darfur, which appear to have escalated, as “a great blot on the conscience of Africa, which the continent cannot afford.
The Foreign Affairs Minister further observed that, Ghanaians have manifested strongly their desire to build a new Ghana on the basis of the principles of democratic accountability, respect for human rights and the rule of law.

“Let us make that our contribution to the flowering of a new African civilisation where freedom, democracy and prosperity are its hallmarks so that our long-suffering people can leave behind, hopefully forever, the Africa of conflicts, authoritarian rule and endemic poverty,” he urged.