The Executive Director of the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG), Dr Emmanuel Akwetey, has challenged Ghanaians to use their multiparty system of governance to find solutions to the challenges being faced by the country.
He reminded all that multiparty democracy was the option for peace.
He added that every country, at a point in time, had innovated systems of governance as solutions to its peculiar challenges; thus, Ghana’s multiparty democracy, with all its challenges, could still be the model to innovate solutions for its economic and social challenges.
Dr Akwetey said this at a sensitisation workshop organised under the State of the Union (SoTU) programme of IDEG and in conjunction with the Civic Forum Initiative (CFI) for journalists.
Ghana’s hybrid system
Dr Akwetey explained that multiparty democracy was increasingly becoming the preferred system of governance in Africa as it was the best framework for managing the diversities of the people of Africa.
However, the multiparty system of governance that had been practised by some countries like Ghana for more than two decades had its challenges.
In certain respects, the country’s hybrid system has been tailored to the Westminster system or parliamentary system of the United Kingdom and in other respects to the presidential system of the United States, he noted.
However, the similarities of the two systems of governance are only reflected in the election of the president of the country and parliamentarians.
Explaining further, Dr Akwetey said in the Westminster system, as practised in the United Kingdom, parties were heavily regulated, with a focus on local elections, and parties having to draft manifestos outlining the policies and programmes, as well as the full cost of such programmes.
The parties also had to hold conferences on their programmes yearly to sensitise people.
In the United States Parliamentary system on the other hand, after the election of the president, think tanks took over, driving policy for the national interest.
Dr Akwetey said when these two systems were juxtaposed to Ghana’s hybrid system, it was evident that the system had not been allowed the needed space for the necessary innovation and growth because apart from elections for the president and parliamentarians, Ghana’s local authorities functioned under appointed people by the president.
He said journalists had to critically look at the challenges and probe for responses on what actions were needed to resolve the challenges.
Dr Akwetey proposed some critical questions that journalists ought to think about and be guided by in their work.
Some of the questions he posed were whether or not the country could afford another disruption in its governance because the benefits of democracy were not being felt fast enough and whether or not having practised a system for more than two decades it was right to do away with it for a new one because of challenges.
Solutions
Dr Akwetey proposed solutions, which were ideas that had come out of the work of IDEG and CFI, that could help in the innovation process.
Among the solutions were the opening up of the executive branch of governance by the election of municipal and district chief executives, making elections at the district level party-based and basing assembly elections on a mixed member proportional representation system as the Electoral Commission (EC) had proposed.
He challenged journalists to also probe political parties and find out what they did in between elections.
He said the political parties in Ghana all functioned contrary to constitutional provisions on the country’s multiparty system.
African perspective
Earlier, a lecturer at the Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy (LECIAD), Dr Linda Akua Darkwa, took journalists through the AU organs and its structures and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG).
She challenged journalists to have a wider perspective on issues, as that would make them better inform their audience on both local and national events.
