Nadowli-Kaleo Legislator, Alban Sumana Bagbin believes political polarisation is the Achilles heel of Ghana’s democracy.
“…These days I hear different voices - polarisation - we are tearing each other apart because of our differences. Why should that be so? It should not,” the former Minority and Majority Leader said in Parliament on Thursday.
He was contributing to a statement made on the floor of Parliament to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the death of Dr JB Danquah, who was one of the ‘Big Six’ and founder-member of the pre-independent United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC).
Dr Danquah died at the age of 69 while in prison at the Nsawam medium security facility. He was one of Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s political detainees. Dr Danquah was arrested and imprisoned without trial under the Preventive Detention Act/Order of 1958 and 1961.
The law, according to Prof Agyeman Badu Akosa, a staunch Nkrumaist, was meant to emasculate terrorists who attempted assassinating and sabotaging Nkrumah’s Government.
Using the rift between Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party and the UGCC to buttress his point, Mr Bagbin said: “The only way that we can learn lessons from the past is to learn to agree to disagree”.
“Mr Speaker, unfortunately, I’m not sure we still, as a country, understand the concept of multiparty democracy,” he bewailed.
Explaining his point, the multiple-time MP said, “…Multiparty democracy is built on the principle of agreeing to disagree, and if we accept that, there should be no need for bitterness because we are created differently”.
“We cannot be the same. We can’t reason the same. We can’t like the same things. It is because of the collective good that we need to bring everybody on board… to make life more beautiful, more interesting, more complete, more enjoyable. That is what life is about,” Bagbin said.
