Strengthening unity in diversity
President John Dramani Mahama on Friday expressed his resolve to continue promoting an atmosphere of positive political relations in order to defuse any tension that may threaten the security of the country.
Advertisement
He also called on all political leaders in the country to do same and said that political power was worth nothing if it plunged the nation into partisan, ethnic or religious strife.
Our different political affiliations, the President said, should not prevent us from working together to solve national challenges.
The Daily Graphic welcomes the President’s forthright position on the simmering tension in our country arising out of religious and ethnic differences.
We know that just next door to Ghana, many countries are in turmoil because their people could not harness the significance of peace and unity even in a diverse environment.
If any one great binding quality of Ghanaians should be mentioned anywhere in the world, it will be our unity in diversity.
Our diversity stems from the fact that as a country, we are religiously and ethnically heterogeneous but within the heterogeneity, we have not suffered any divisionary tendencies or conflicts but we remain resolute in our vision of national peace and harmony.
Without doubt, the Constitutional provisions that guaranteed freedoms of religion, association and expression, among other values, from the promulgation of the constitution in 1992, were just an icing on the unified cake of national cohesion.
This country had witnessed democratic processes in the past that stretched our democratic tolerance to its elastic ends but failed in creating conditions for instability. Thus, we can say for sure that the country has come a long way not because of what the law may expressly say, but because of the strength we, as a people, have found in diversity.
Ghana is where it is now, not because of the unknown future that lies ahead of us, but because of the clear path behind us for which history will praise the participating generations who paid their dues.
Without venturing into the merits of the case that recently caused some stir, the Daily Graphic is of the view that the usual tact and diplomacy, as well as the open-mindedness that have been the stock-in-trade of the Ghanaian, should have been an available tool for talking out any challenges.
One fact that should be embedded in our thoughts and imprinted in our actions as a people is that democracy is not a tangible robe that an invisible force throws into our body politic.
It is rather an outcome of our decisions, covert and overt, that dovetails into the footprints that will take us to the next level of progress or retrogression.
While ever hoping that our steps as a nation will be positively inclined forever, we must remain active in ensuring that no enemy of progress redirects any single step that we take into the negative.
We should always be guided by our slogan of “One Nation, One People with One Destiny” and never should we allow any issue, no matter how sentimental it may seem to us, to derail us from the greater goal of achieving that which succeeding generations would praise us for.
The part of the National Anthem that says, “God bless our homeland Ghana and make our nation great and strong” can only be achieved if we streamline our actions within the ambit of the reaches of tolerance for diversity, containable differences, fortitude in one-to-one engagements and fellow feeling.