Prioritise issues of governance in manifestos - Dr Osae-Kwapong to political parties

Political parties have been urged to prioritise how best they will tackle issues of good governance and deepen the nation's democracy in their manifestos.

Although the implementation of best economic ideas and policies is important, that would not produce the desired results in an environment of major governance challenges.

Some of the challenges are growing mistrust in democratic institutions, growing perception of corruption in democratic institutions and inequality before the law, political leaders not listening to the citizenry, growing dissatisfaction about how democracy works and optimism about the nation's democracy changing for the better not encouraging.

Democracy project

The Executive Director of Democracy Project (DP), Dr John Osae-Kwapong, stated these at the first meeting with political party representatives on the DP in Accra last Thursday.

The Democracy Project is a registered entity in Ghana funded by the West Africa Democracy Solidarity Network (WADEMOS) with a vision to promote, strengthen and safeguard democratic governance. 

One of the key components of the project, “The Democracy Pledge”, seeks to work with registered political parties to come up with specific commitments aimed at addressing the identified governance challenges.

The party representatives that attended the meeting were the General Secretary of the People's National Convention (PNC), Janet Asana Nabla; General Secretary of Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG), Jerry Owusu Appiah; General Secretary of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), Citizen Ato Dadzie, and the Executive Director and National Secretary of the Progressive People's Party (PPP), Richard Nii Amarh, and Remy Paa Kow Edmundson, respectively.

The others were the Secretary General of the National Democratic Party (NDP), Alhaji Mohammed Frimpong; members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Inter-party and Civil Society Relations, Dr Samuel Younge and Verdict Noble, respectively.

The rest were the General Secretary of All People's Congress (APC), Mordecai Thiombiano Lompo, and a leading member of the Movement for Change, Yaw Buaben Asamoa.

Good governance

Dr Osae-Kwapong explained that good governance must have attributes such as participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus-oriented, equity and inclusiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, and accountability by public office holders.

He added that the whole process of decision-making must be transparent while ensuring that democratic institutions were free from corruption.

Dr Osae-Kwapong indicated that research had shown that the country had been able to address the electoral part of democracy such as regular elections, presence of political parties, a constitutionally guaranteed right to vote, among other things.

“This is my worry.

 The campaigns so far are not addressing democratic regression in Ghana.

I expect the campaigns to address this and offer real substantive ideas about how to stop this trend and place the country on a solid path towards democratic consolidation,” he further explained.

Dr Osae-Kwapong said the real challenge was to “deepen the substance such as political culture, civil liberties and functioning of government; they are the areas that give character and meaning to democracy while also ensuring that democracy is not simply an end, but also a means to an end.”

He reminded the two major political parties — the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the dominant opposition NDC — to prioritise matters of good governance and democracy, corruption, the number of ministers and constitutional reforms which he said were some of the public concerns going into this year's elections.