Don’t usurp constitutional responsibilities — Dr Mahama urges politicians

THE 2008 presidential candidate of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Dr Edward Mahama, has appealed to the media to ensure that politicians do not usurp the media’s constitutional responsibility of setting a development agenda that will propel the nation forward.
He said it was because the media had left that onerous responsibility in the hands of politicians that the entire media landscape was filled with political issues, at the expense of national development issues.
Dr Mahama was addressing participants at an international senior residency programme in governance and political leadership in Accra.
The three-day conference, organised by the Graduate School of Governance and Leadership, was on the theme, “The media in the Fourth Republic: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”.
Dr Mahama blamed the media for all the problems the National Health Insurance Scheme was encountering because they failed to ask the appropriate questions when the New Patriotic Party (NPP) introduced the scheme.
He was unhappy that although it was the PNC which was the first party to publicly declare that it would provide a national health insurance and school feeding, that was never publicised by any media.
He added that even when leading members of the NPP made mockery of the PNC and doubted the feasibility of implementing those policies but later decided to implement same, the media never bothered to ask the pertinent questions.
Mr Ben Ephson, the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Dispatch, said it was the responsibility of the media to let Ghanaians know the character and intentions of people who wanted to lead them.
He said although the media must not publish all the dangerous and divisive statements by those politicians, they had the obligation to let the electorate have the opportunity to view the correct picture of the people seeking to be their leaders.
Mr Ephson, who said he was incarcerated for five months during Rawlings’s unconstitutional regime in the 1980s, defended his argument with some of the stories he wrote about atrocities meted out to some Ghanaians during the Rawlings military regime, which included the roasting of people’s penis and the cutting of their flesh as punishment.
He said although those publications in the foreign media were dangerous and also bordered on patriotism, he was vindicated years later when he had to appear before the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) to give testimony in camera.
He expressed worry over the increasing level of unprofessionalism among his colleagues in the inky fraternity, especially radio presenters, some of whom knew next to nothing but presented programmes on almost all technical and most scientific and legal issues.
Mr Ephson was of the view that to address the problem, which included half-educated persons presenting programmes on radio, any punitive measures for such lapses must be meted out to the owners of such radio stations.
“Owners of irresponsible radio stations should be made to bear the brunt of the irresponsibility of their presenters,” he suggested, adding that that would make those owners employ well qualified and meticulous presenters who would abide by the ethics of the profession.
The Founder of Foundation for Future Leaders, a youth empowerment group, Mr Dei Tumi, was unhappy about the apparent neglect by the various political, religious, governance and educational institutions to inculcate in the youth the need to be patriotic.
According to him, the increasing canker of corruption and other forms of attitudes that negatively affect the forward march of the nation could be traced to the fact that the people were not patriotic and also did not understand why they should sacrifice a little for the development of their country.