The Deputy Minority Leader in Parliament, Mr Dominic Nitiwul, has underscored the need for the participation of civil society and citizens in general in policy-making, governance and public services, saying it is critical to ensuring a healthy and vibrant democracy.
He said many of the challenges Ghana faced as a country would require the collective knowledge, creativity and energies of all citizens, including the Executive, Parliament and civil society, to deal with.
“We, as a country, have already taken steps to give our citizens greater influence over decisions that affect their lives through the work of Parliament, but we can and need to do more by ensuring that the voices of all citizens are heard at every level of government,” he added.
Mr Nitiwul was speaking at a dialogue between Parliament and civil society organisations in Accra on Monday.
The forum was to create the opportunity for various civil society organisations to interact with Parliament and create a collaboration among them to address the problems of poverty and exclusion.
It also afforded the parties the occasion to agree on concrete and workable institutional mechanisms to facilitate sustained interface between them.
In the opinion of the organisers - STAR-Ghana, a stronger legislature requires more robust citizen engagement and an increasing willingness by civil society and the wider public to “own” the vital institution of Parliament.
In STAR-Ghana’s view, a strong and effective Parliament-civil society collaboration is not a preferred approach to ensuring equitable and sustainable national development; it is a prerequisite.
STAR-Ghana is a multi-donor programme which aims at helping to increase the accountability and responsiveness of government.
It has over the years assisted Parliament to enhance its capacity to fulfil its mandate, particularly in ensuring greater transparency, accountability and responsiveness in the delivery of public goods and services.
It also supports CSOs through project grants and technical assistance to develop and implement projects aimed at improving citizens’ access to quality public goods and services.
Mr Nitiwul said Parliament had a “heavy” responsibility of performing oversight functions over the executive, a role which would ensure accountable, transparent and responsive governance.
To achieve that constitutional responsibility, he said, it was essential that Parliament effectively collaborated with civil society to achieve an accountable, transparent and responsive government.
The benefits of such collaboration, he said, would include open governance and access to information.
Open government, he added, would provide essential foundation for economic, social and political progress by strengthening the transparency of institutions while maintaining the privacy of citizens.
Access to information, which would require partnership between Parliament and CSO, would allow people to work together more effectively and collaborate with each other .
The Member of Parliament for Ablekuma South, Mr Fritz Frederick Baffour, who represented the Majority Leader in Parliament, said all citizens of Ghana had a collective responsibility to ensure that the existing governance system was transparent, accountable and responsive.
“This can be done through approved channels of communication,” he added.
“We are empowered by the constitution to do so, in as much as the Constitution stipulates that governmental power must be exercised in the manner and within the limits laid down in the supreme law. This level of limitation, as espoused by the Constitution which is the bedrock of constitutionalism, is to ensure that these attributes of governance are achieved.
But, indeed, as the law-making arm of government whose functions are very critical in attaining these attributes, we need to have partnership arrangements with relevant civil society organisations to effectively ensure that our governance system is accountable, transparent and responsive,” he added.
By Mark-Anthony Vinorkor
