By Binta A Bah
Former National Assembly member, Halifa Sallah has told the meeting of the African, Caribbean and Pacific joint parliament with the European Parliament that Africa will not be part of the West’s foreign policy, emphasising that Africans are advance of them concerning what should be done about the world.
Addressing the 41st Session of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly of ACP-EU in France recently, Sallah told the assembly that the West’s impression that Africans do not want to condemn Russia is unseemly. “We do not want to be part of your foreign policy, we do not want you to use us, we want to be free to determine for ourselves whether we condemn or not. So, it is important for you to change your mentality. We need to understand that we are all equal and sometimes we are advance of you in thinking what should be done about the world,” he stressed.
He went on: “All of us must be allowed to speak our conscience. What we must avoid is Europe thinking that we are going to allow their sphere of influence. There are no super powers otherwise Afghanistan will not be left to those who are controlling it today if America was a super power. There are no super powers and that is why Syria is what it is now today. We should abandon the super power ideology and begin a corporation of equality knowing that in all parts of globe, there are people of conscience but they are not yet in power. We should think of how do we empower all those people so that we will rid this world of tyrants, people who do not feel the sufferings of the people.”
He said the “the real thinkers of Europe”, those who really created the European Union were creative in creating Yaounde and the Lomé Conventions ensuring subsidies of agricultural production minerals because they knew that they were gaining huge benefits from value added and to share that profit so that Africa will also benefit from that same development.
“So, it was sharing basis not the narrow nationalist sentiments thinking that you are taking European tax money and giving it to ACP states. Those people were ingenious. They calculated. They ensure that Europe was gaining from our economies and also giving back. But that mentality is disappearing with this new generation. I do not know how creative the new generation is but they need to reinvent their corporation strategies,” he said.
“Essentially what I’m emphasizing is that all of us must have a heart that beats in unison with the heartbeat of the people of the world. All of us must feel the suffering of the world.”
