Monitor, guide country’s democratic dispensation — CDD urges Ghanaians

The Executive Director of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Congress (CDD-Ghana), Prof. Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, has called on Ghanaians to keep a watchful eye, monitor and guide the country’s democratic dispensation so as to be beneficial to the entire society.
“We truly believe that building democracy, establishing democratic foundations for a well-governed society, institutionalising the rule of law, and entrenching a culture of democracy and good governance is a process. It is not an event,” he added.
Prof. Gyimah-Baadi said this at the launch of a book “Watching Democracy in Ghana” in Accra on Thursday. The 307 page book is a compilation of articles and other materials that were published by the Centre in its publication “Democracy Watch,” the mouth piece of the Centre over the last 10 years.
Prof. Gyimah-Boadi said no society was fully democratic and explained that all that had happened was that “some may have reached a more advanced stage than others, some may have just started the journey, and others have hardly started at all”.
He explained that democracy must be seen as a process that could grow and deepen, stagnate, suffer reversal, setbacks and backslide, but to derive the best and sustain it would require vigilance from all stakeholders.
He explained that it was in the light of monitoring the democratic process that the CDD-Ghana had over the last 10 years been coming out with its chief instrument with which it performs the task of monitoring, watch-dogging and keeping vigilance over the process of Ghanaian democratisation and good governance.
The CDD-Ghana executive director explained that the book provided an analysis and commentary on those events and developments, highlighting their implications for the development of democracy and fostering good governance in Ghana.
Additionally, he said, the documents also prescribed solutions to the various democracy and good governance challenges highlighted in the articles.
He admitted that not all readers might agree with the views expressed and positions taken in the document, however, the centre always ensured that the views, positions and prescriptions were based on reason and evidence.
Launching the book, the Majority Leader, Mr Alban Somani Bagbin, commended the centre for its contributions towards the advancement of democracy and its institutions in the country over the years.
He talked of how the centre’s documents and other literatures had helped him as a person and parliament in general.
He said for the current democratic process to be successful, it demanded that all players become tolerant of each other’s views and positions.
Mr Bagbin was not happy that Ghanaian media always focused on the very few disagreements between majority and the minority in parliament.
“But they fail to tell the world about the how the House had almost always arrived at decisions on consensus”, he said.
Reviewing the book, Mr Ben Ephson, the Managing Editor of the Daily Dispatch said going through the document, it was evident that Ghanaian politicians were the same irrespective of the side of the divide they belonged.
He said the only difference was that the opposition was trying to win power while those in government were always trying to entrench their position.
He gave some of the titles in the book which showed that nothing much had changed on the political landscape since 2001.
Those included the “Emerging NDC culture of complaint”, “A call for debate on the retirement package for Ghanaians leaders”, “How much do public officers make” among others.