A founder member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, has said Ghana’s problem is her inability to harness expert talent to solve national problems because of partisanship.
He has, therefore, called for the tapping of talents from all sides of the political spectrum to overcome the challenges the country is currently facing.
Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe, who is a former Ambassador to Serbia and Montenegro, premised his suggestion on the recent lectures delivered by Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and Professor Kwesi Botchwey during which the two expressed similar sentiments over the current crisis that had bedevilled the country’s economy.
According to him, unlike what pertains in most developed democracies, partisanship prevents the country’s own experts and former political leaders from contributing to solving national problems.
The founder member in an interview with the Daily Graphic, attributed the problem to what happened in the past when the growth of the country’s political culture was stunned, consequently affecting the country’s development agenda until it returned to democracy in 1992.
He said what was needed was the nationalistic political culture that, for instance, informed President Barack Obama’s decision to retain Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary of his predecessor, George Bush, in the most sensitive cabinet position.
Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe also cited a similar instance in Canada where the conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, had no difficulty appointing key rival, former Liberal Deputy Minister John Manley, to head an independent, non-partisan panel reviewing Canada’s mission and future role in Afghanistan, which was supported by Manley’s colleagues in his party.
According to Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe, it is also that nationalistic culture that informed Dr Mahathir Mohammed’s development policy in Malaysia and propelled that nation to overtake Ghana, although the two countries attained independence the same year.
He called on President Mahama to do more to bring in experts associated with the opposition parties, and urged opposition parties to also avoid stigmatising members contributing their expertise to the national effort.
“From now on, it must be all hands on deck to save the economy,” Dr Tamakloe stated, adding that “poverty is non-partisan and affects us all.”
He concluded that statesmen must also do more to contribute to institutional memory by writing memoirs, so that as generations of political leaders changed, lessons from the past would remain.