Ghanaian businessman, Dr. Kofi Amoah, has expressed concerns over the state of Ghana’s democracy and how it is practiced.
Dr. Amoah noted that our dispensation is more focused on the quest for power than on the laws that ensure that things work in the country.
Speaking in an interview with Happy FM’s Don Prah on the ‘Epa Hoa Daben’ show, he illustrated: “We have a parliament that is supposed to be representing us. From some of the decisions that are being taken, are they representing us? I, Kofi Amoah, don’t think so. It becomes a personal quest for power and whatever.
If you have three arms of government made up of the executive, judiciary, and legislature, the legislature is supposed to represent the people and check the executive. If the executive brings a proposal for a loan, it is parliament’s duty to check and say ‘the loan has become too much so let’s look for other alternatives’. So, the system of our democracy is questionable. Maybe that is part of the reason we are still at a standstill”.
He furthered that in any case, Ghana must consider if the democratic practice is compatible with our society especially because we only adopted the practice from our colonial masters after we came out from colonialism
Ghana, formerly known as the Gold Coast, was Sub-Saharan Africa’s first nation to declare the end of British colonial rule. Kwame Nkrumah led the country into independence in 1957. The newly formed country became a catalyst for independence movements across the continent. Ghana was seen as a stronghold for a well-functioning democracy that few other nations have established since garnering their independence.