The Convention People’s Party (CPP) on Monday tasked African opposition political parties to offer alternative policy directions to governments on national issues instead of “unnecessary politicking”.
“Governments should be challenged based on facts for the development of the country, to improve the lot of the people and not through political manoeuvring to dent the image of the ruling party for electoral gains,” Professor Ageyman Badu Akosa, a leading member of the party, told the Ghana News Agency in Accra.
Speaking on a wide range of issues for 2011, which the government has declared an “Action Year”, Prof. Akosa said: “I expect the opposition political parties to be more focused, stop politicisation of almost everything in the country.”
“Politicking must end after elections for real government business...no country has ever developed with over politicisation of national issues; we must have a national agenda which we must pursue. Our politicking seems that most parties have no agenda after elections and (they) just want to destroy the government.”
On the media, Prof. Akosa, a former presidential candidate of the CPP, said: “2011 must be used for more development oriented quality discussion instead of the 24/7 unnecessary political debate on the airwaves.”
He reminded Ghanaian journalists that almost everybody in the country could identify with one problem or the other, but what we were looking for were the solutions.
“The daily discussion of problems will not help us; we must begin to discuss alternatives and provide solutions to the numerous problems facing ordinary Ghanaians.”
Prof. Akosa also tasked the presidency to decentralize governance. “In your action year take the presidency to the people. Move the seat of governance to the regions on a monthly basis. In January the President can for instance move to Upper East and spend at least a week in conducting all government business from there.”
“Such a development will give true meaning to democracy, re-direct infrastructural development, draw the world’s attention to the regional potential and strengthen grassroots participation in governance.”
Prof. Akosa explained that as a nation state, it did not appear as if the welfare of the citizenry mattered very much to the leadership of the two leading political parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the civil and public service.
“What have all our Governments done in the last 41 years after Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s overthrow...?
“We have been led badly but, more so, by those who were paid $13 million in 1966 by the Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow the properly elected government of Ghana,” Prof. Akosa said.
Prof. Akosa said the attitude of both NDC and NPP leadership to governance showed that Ghanaian political leaders had not come to grasp with the import of the preamble to the 1992 Constitution.
The preamble states: “In the name of the Almighty God, we the people of Ghana in exercise of our natural and inalienable right to establish a framework of government which shall secure for ourselves and posterity the blessing of liberty, equality of opportunity and prosperity; in a spirit of friendship and peace with all peoples of the world: and in solemn declaration and affirmation of our commitment to; Freedom, Justice, probity and accountability; The principle that all powers of Government spring from the sovereign Will of the people; The Principle of Universal Adult Suffrage; The Rule of Law; The protection and preservation of fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms, Unity and Stability for our Nation Do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this constitution.”
He said “we are certainly not working to achieve it” and therefore tasked the Mills Administration to translate the Action Year into reality not just political rhetoric.