Prez Kufuor calls for more research on Ghana's politics

Accra, Aug. 17, GNA - President John Agyekum Kufuor on Saturday said Ghana had not benefited from the heritage of ideas and principles that motivated the pioneering leaders to launch the political parties and traditions that were still driving the country's evolution for development.

He said unless conscious efforts were made in a systematic manner to research, compile, analyse and publish critically those ideas and principles within reasonable time, the body politic would stand the danger of losing some of the essence of the stock of wisdom and history that motivated these great men.

President Kufuor was speaking at a fund-raising dinner dance organised by the Busia Foundation at the Banquet Hall in Accra, as part of activities to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Professor Kofi Abrefa Busia, Prime Minister of the Second Republic, who died in 1978.

The Foundation incorporated in June 1997 was to preserve and disseminate the ideas, ideals and principles of Professor Busia a pioneering advocate of the liberal democratic ideals of the United Party (UP) tradition of Ghana.

Other activities planned for the anniversary include a remembrance service at the Wesley Methodist Cathedral in Kumasi, a five-day exhibition, family gathering, wreath laying and tributes by political, academic and religious personalities as well as an inter-denominational thanksgiving service.

President Kufuor said it was necessary that the majority of Ghanaians especially the youth, were informed about the historical personalities and their divergent philosophies, principles, outlooks, associations and traditions that combined to form the nation.

He said most Ghanaians were getting more and more oblivious of the nation's previous attempts at democratic governance largely because of the absence of properly researched and documented information put out in a sustained manner.

"Whatever information that is put out in context of the public by one or other of the political divide has tended to be coloured with propaganda, sentiments and much superficiality. In the process, the virtue of balanced assessment of the past leaders and their individual divergent impact on the nation's evolution tend to get lost", he said. He said "obviously, the importance of such balanced assessment to provide a guide for good governance to our young and struggling nation cannot be over-emphasised." President Kufuor said most African countries had stumbled from one misrule and dictatorship into another and the pervasiveness of civil strife on the continent were the result of nations not having been able to take critical stock of the political and governmental direction for their individual development.