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IEA sets agenda for Election 2008
campaign
Accra, July 8, Ghanadot/GNA – The Institute of Economic
Affairs (IEA Ghana) on Tuesday outlined pro-active
electioneering campaign benchmarks to guide the electorate
to determine the choice of a President.
Mrs Jean Mensa, IEA Ghana Administrator told the Ghana News
Agency in Accra that the benchmarks were to ensure that the
electorate understood the issues at stake, which had
retarded progress over the last 51 years.
“We are compelled to raise questions about the approaches
that have been adopted to solve the development problems of
our nation, why after several years of structural adjustment
programmes, economic recovery initiatives, debt forgiveness,
liberalization and other interventions our infrastructure is
still at the rudimentary stage.”
Mrs Mensa expressed concern that over the past 51 years, the
railway network, water infrastructure and electricity
infrastructure had expanded only marginally and questioned
why the structure of the economy had not changed.
She urged the electorate to vote for forward-looking leaders
who can take bold and sometimes unpopular initiatives in the
interest of Ghana to further achieve growth.
The electorate, she said, should be able to select a leader
that has the capability to find home grown solutions to the
nation’s numerous social-economic problems.
“These are some of the difficult issues that confront us as
we go into 2008 Election.”
Mrs Mensa noted that the nation continues to depend largely
on agriculture and the export of primary products, while the
industrial sector remained weak and uncompetitive on the
local and external markets.
“As a country we have constituted ourselves into
distributors of goods manufactured from every corner of the
world, thus exposing our manufacturing sector to
unrestrained and unnecessary competition.”
She urged the electorate to demand from the flag bearers
their strategy to transform agriculture from its present
small-holder base - the hoe and the cutlass, that their
grand fathers used in a country that relied on agriculture
for its growth and employment to modernize system.
Mrs Mensa said the IEA’s evening encounters that were held
for presidential aspirants offered the electorate the
opportunity to determine which among the flag bearers was
the most suitable for the high office of the President of
Ghana.
“Through the platform, the IEA created an opportunity for
the electorate to acquire inquisitive skills that would
enable them to take ownership of the electoral process to
demand accountability from politicians before they vote for
them.
“Let me emphasise again that, the Evening Encounter is one
of the various initiatives that we in the IEA plan to
introduce into the Ghanaian body politic to consolidate and
deepen multiparty democracy and good governance in Ghana.”
Meanwhile, political parties which were not invited to
participate in the Evening Encounter have expressed disquiet
about the modality used by the IEA to deny them the
opportunity to sell their policies to the electorate.
The Democratic Freedom Party, New Vision Party, Democratic
Peoples Party and Great Consolidated Popular Party - said
the IEA Encounter, designed to enable only flag bearers of
political parties with representation in Parliament to
outline their visions, was discriminatory.
In separate interviews with Ghana News Agency, leading
members of the parties, while commending the IEA for the
initiative, suggested the removal of the clause that
debarred parties without representation in parliament from
taking part.
“We must all be given an equal playing field to campaign,”
said DPP flagbearer Mr Thomas Ward-Brew.
They also called on the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science
and Technology (KNUST) and Association of Ghana Industries,
which created a platform for four flag bearers to outline
their energy and business visions to extend the same
facilities to all elected flag bearers.
GNA
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