Expectedly, the 2012 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has declared his intention to run for the 2016 presidential race for his party.
Towards that end, therefore, he would respond accordingly when his party opens nomination for those interested in vying for the position sometime next year, he told his teeming supporters yesterday.
It has been a long wait for not only supporters of his party, but others who have a stake in the development of democracy in the country since after all, the NPP as the largest opposition party in the country, a government-in-waiting. When he asked to be given time to consult with God as he retired to the United Kingdom for a six-month vacation, his admirers were a bit apprehensive about what the spiritual consultation was going to spawn.
Now he has spoken and their nerves have been calmed: we expect that the food for thought contained in his speech would be imbibed by his party faithful. This would go a long way in giving local politics the decency it deserves for it to reach the enviable pedestal as in the advanced democracies.
With every political development in the country’s parties, our experience in democracy witnesses a growth.
The level of maturity of a country’s democracy can be measured in several ways: one of which is how members of the political parties conduct themselves, especially in the face of internal contests within their folds.
It is our wish therefore that having come this far in our practice of democracy, the shortcomings notwithstanding, we would be weaning ourselves from the dirty tactics which unfortunately have reared their ugly heads here and there on the political landscape.
We should be inching closer to the decency much needed for democracy, especially when we go to the national polls to choose our leaders. The need for the choice of the people to prevail devoid of deliberate human interference so the outcome of the polls can’t be tainted, cannot be overemphasized. We are witnesses to the economic challenges which characterized the last elections. We certainly do not want to traverse that path anymore. Whoever wins an election should do so decently without having those responsible for managing the exercise compromising their positions to achieve that goal.
Let us position local politics on a fresh trajectory, one on which insults would be pushed to the backburners. That is growth and that is what we should achieve this long after independence.
Let the leadership of both parties – the NPP and the NDC – hold their hounds at bay so that the usual litany of insults is completely eliminated.
Is it not time to start tackling issues instead of personalities who put forth ideas that are intended to move the country forward? Are they not ashamed who subjected the free SHS mantra of Nana Akufo-Addo to ridicule and outright insults, now that President John Mahama has adopted it?
When we clean the slates and steer away from the politics of calumny, it will be in our interest and that of generations unborn.