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By Prince MacDonald (Accra, Ghana)

April 12, 2005: As Ghanaians struggle to accept the reality and the existence of homosexuality in their country, the gay and lesbian association of Ghana (GALAG) finds a recent answer to a question posed to the minister designate for Attorney General during a vetting process in parliament house in Accra curiously interesting.

After fearful presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2004 which led to the re-election of the current president, Mr. John Agyekum Kufour, the president nominated new ministers of state to fulfill the constitutional mandate.

The constitution of Ghana says in article 78 (1) that, "ministers of state shall be appointed by the president with prior approval of parliament from among the members of parliament or a person qualify to be elected to be a member of parliament, except that the majority of ministers of state shall be appointed from among members of parliament".

In fulfilling this constitutional mandate, the nominated ministers of state were vetted by parliament before being approved as ministers of state.

Questions asked during vetting ranged from past corruption records of the individual minister designates, vision for his/her pending ministry and how he/she is going to work with the bureaucracy and systems already in place.

When the process got to the turn of the minister designate for Attorney General; he was probed on what his approach would be in dealing with the gay and lesbian community in Ghana. Particularly if the LGBTI community initiates constitutional reform proposals like the legalization of homosexuality.

The LGBT community in Ghana, for long silent and timid, waited in anticipation for the response of the minister designate, as it was difficult in the past to pose such a question because of intimidation. Making it that much more ironical is that the gentleman in question has an impeccable human rights record. He responded by saying that all the countries that have legalized homosexuality went through a due process before doing so. As such he believes that Ghana would have to go through the same political interface, and when the country gets to that bridge, it would learn how to cross it.

Because the vetting process was shown live across a number of television channels in Ghana, the LGBT community worked up a short message service (sms) storm expressing their shock and surprise at the Attorney General designate's response. As in most African countries, visible dialogue or debate in public wouldn't be encouraged and mobile sms offers the LGBTI community relative safety from harassment.

As Ghana improvises on its democracy and human rights environment, it is the hope of the LGBT community to get more support from individuals and organizations working in the fields of human rights to support the LGBT community, to help in the struggle towards the "bridge".

The community also needs capacity building programmes as well as mobilization strategies. At the moment individuals accepting their own sexuality is still sticky as there is general feeling of guilt emanating from the typical Sodom and Gomorrah slant of fundamental Christians.

Even though the answer was good to most LGBT's in Ghana, the nagging question remains: when is the LGBTI community ever going to cross the "bridge"? And most pertinently, which prominent politicians, businessmen and power brokers in Ghana support the LGBTI movement?

Ed's note: The correspondent omitted to mention the name of the gentleman in the story for safety reasons, but the current Attorney General and Minister of Justice is Mr. Ayikoi Otoo available through email attorneygeneral@ghana.com. There is no correlation between him and the story.