Political parties urged to strengthen democracy

Dr K.Y. Amoah, Founder and President of the Africa Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET), says Ghana’s democracy would be strengthened if the various political parties become more policy and development oriented rather than election oriented.

According to the ACET boss, most political parties often pay less attention to Ghana’s public policy needs, which results in the population’s increased doubt about our democratic stability.

Speaking at the 10th Anniversary Memorial Lecture of the Oyeeman Wereko Ampem II in Accra on Friday, Dr Amoah said Ghanaians must ensure that political parties work towards the betterment of Ghana’s democracy and the citizenry rather than for the betterment of their party members.

The late Oyeeman Ampem II, who was born on October 29, 1930 and died on November 26, 2005 at the age of 75, was enstooled as the Chief of Amanokrom on August 4, 1975 and reigned for 30 years. The late Chief, who was an economist, a statistician and a business executive, was known in private life as Emmanuel Nii Noi Amaboe and was the chancellor of the University of Ghana.

“Too often, our political parties appear to operate solely as election machines, paying too little attention to Ghana’s public policy needs. Party manifestos are ad hoc and always realistic. Financing is weakly regulated and hardly accountable. Rational development discourse gets drowned out by personal political disputes. Of course, the sense of perpetual political campaigning brought on by overload doesn’t help,” Dr Amoah stated.

The former Executive Secretary for UN Economic Transformation (ECA) indicated that political parties could turn their manifestoes into medium-term policy programmes as a basis for campaigning and educating the public or establish a joint commission to regulate party activity and support programme development.

He also counselled government to promote macroeconomic policies and regulatory environment to allow businesses to flourish, lead in the production of goods and services, and create jobs for our growing labour force particularly the youth.

The event brought together personalities like former President John Agyekum Kufuor; Prof Baffour Agyeman-Duah, Chief Executive for the John Agyekum Kufuor (JAK) Foundation; Dr Cadman Mills, Co-board Chairman for the Atta Mills Memorial Foundation; and Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong , Attorney General, among others.