National Committee to Promote Politics

The National Committee for Civic Education (NCCE) will soon introduce a communication medium designed to promote interaction between the public and the commission on politics. The chairman of the Committee, Mr. Chris Hesse, made the announcement a recent seminar in Accra.

Participants for the seminar were drawn from the Staff College, the 48th Field Engineers Regiment, the Military Academy and Training School and the First Infantry Brigade The two-day seminar was jointly organised by the NCCE and Konard Adenauer Foundation of Germany is under the theme "The Armed Forces, the constitution an the democratisation process".

Topics discussed included contents of the constitution, political tolerance - the basis of constitutional stability, human rights and civic duties, as well as defending the constitution, the role of the Armed Forces.

Mr Hesse said the medium would be known as Citizens Mail Bag (CMB), emplaning that through it, the commission would receive letters from the public on various political issues which the NCCE would in turn provide answers to. The answer would be mailed to the questioner concerned on a countrywide basis and would later in turn published in the media.

The NCCE chairman said the introduction of the communication medium was to accord the public easy access to participate in the political process by raising relevant questions arising from constitutional matter.

On the seminar's relevance, Mr Hesse noted that it was part of the commission efforts to foster the spirit of consultation and participate among institutions including the Armed Forces.

Pointing out that in NCCE estimation the Armed Forces remained one of the important stake holders under current constitution's democracy.

He said Armed Forces personnel at Tema, Kumasi, Takoradi, Ho,Tamela and the Achiase Jungle Welfare School would also benefit from the seminar and hoped it would achieve positive results.

Contributing, Mr Augustus Tanoh a lawyer and a businessman said national unity and interrogation was a central point in the constitution which need to be preserved by all Ghanaians irrespective of one's political persuasions and background.

He said to help achieve integration, there was the need to promote the concept of participation among the people, in all spheres of national life noting that one way of doing this was to develop the concept of decentralisation in local government as expressed in chapter 20 of the Constitution.

Mr Tanoh said it was necessary that the citizens were well organised and sensitised to enable them to appreciate the sacrifices involved in the development process, stressing that they should also be made to have an insight into the pursuit of their national duties.

A member of the commission, Mr. E.T.K Addo, in his presentation traced the incidence of political intolerance to the inability of parties to tolerate the views of one another.

Tolerance, he said was fundamental mark of democracy which would have to pursued to bring about development, noting that for any constitutional order to attain success, it would have to depend on the people's ability to be tolerant of one another.