Hon Muntaka spits venom, calls bluff of foreign diplomats

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for Asawase, Mohammed Muntaka, is threatening to get the people on the streets – lead a demonstration against any member of the diplomatic community, seeking to punish Ghanaians at the forefront of the campaign to criminalize lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+) advocacy and practice, by denying them travel visas to their countries.

He said he found it quite irritating, the attempts by some of the diplomats to intimidate and bully, particularly, the elected representatives of the people – MPs over the position they had taken. Alhaji Muntaka, speaking to a local radio station in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, underlined their determination to pass the “Proper Human Sexual Rights and the Ghanaian Family Values Bill”, saying, nobody was going to stop them from doing that.

He added that, seeking to punish any MP for views they hold and express on national issues on the floor of parliament, amounted to a breach of the West African country’s basic law – the constitution.

The passage of the bill, which is before parliament, will criminalize any advocacy and all LGBTQ+ activities in Ghana.

The bill has generated a lot of heat with the Christian community expressing strong support and ratcheting pressure on the elected representatives of the people to get it passed into law.

Some of the Christian leaders have openly declared that they would influence members of their church to vote down politicians, opposing the bill.

A group of top Ghanaian lawyers, respected scholars and professionals, is also fighting to shoot down the bill, which they describe as backward and a violation of the fundamental human rights of the LGBTQI+ community.

One of them, Mr. Akoto Ampaw, says they are not supporting same-sex marriages. Far from that, they completely abhor that. What they are not supporting is the violation of human rights.

They would not want to see the fundamental human rights any individual or group trampled on. He argues that, because majority of Ghanaians say they are not for same-sex marriage, is not a justification for the rights of the minority to be curtailed.

By: Kyeretwie Nana Osei Bonsu