The General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Fifi Fiavi Kwetey, has stressed the need for the country to rally around a common goal and ambition as a people to help provide a leap in national development.
Describing it as the “Ghana Dream”, just as America will say “The American Dream”, Mr Kwetey said the NDC believed that delivering that collaboratively would bring about sustained development that would benefit all.
He said the party would open a dialogue with its colleagues on the other side as well as engage with other stakeholders so that there would be consensus and agreement on certain aspects of the development process.
“After 31 years of what we have done, we want to move to the next stage and that is why we want to initiate dialogue and reach out to our colleagues on the other side and other stakeholders to agree to put the national interest above what benefits individual parties,” the NDC General Secretary said during a courtesy call on the Editor, Graphic, Theophilus Yartey.
Mr Kwetey insisted that after 31 years of staying the course of democratic rule, the country now should be taking a “quantum leap” in its development process.
To achieve that warranted building stronger, efficient and truly independent institutions whose role will not be in doubt, irrespective of the party forming the government, he said.
“After 31 years of the journey, we should be in a place where the Electoral Commission, for instance, becomes so effortless in its work that we don’t need to lose sleep over whether that body is trustworthy enough to conduct an election.’’
“And the only reason why we have that is because in spite of the fact that we have growth, we still have not done the evolution that would allow us to appreciate that parties will go and come but the evolution will continue,” the NDC General Secretary posited.
Mr Kwetey articulated the points when he led a four-man delegation from the biggest opposition party for the courtesy call in Accra last Wednesday.
Accompanied by the party’s Director of International Relations, Alex Segbefia, and two other party officers, the visit was part of a series of engagement the NDC is holding with key media houses to explore ways of boosting its relationship with the publishing house.Fifi Fiavi Kwetey (arrowed), General Secretary of the NDC; Theophilus Yartey (4th from right), Editor, Graphic, with members of the NDC delegation and the editorial board. Picture: ESTHER ADJORKOR ADJEI
It was also to explore how the two organisations could collaborate to better disseminate information that promotes the national interest.
Destruction
Stressing why there must be a change towards pursuing what was in the national interest, Mr Kwetey said it was almost as though the country was living in the independence era when the mentality was that the only way to survive was for one to destroy the opponent as opposed to “we both can thrive”.
“That is the conversation that I personally wish our friends on the other side can appreciate, that we both can thrive and don’t need to destroy each other,” he stated.
The NDC General Secretary condemned the tendency to destroy businesses perceived to be aligned to opponents when parties assumed the reins of government and destroyed new institutions that got set up by the opponent and corrupted institutions to become only carriers of information that was helpful to their cause and destructive to the other party.
Mr Kwetey described the situation as primitive politics that both sides of the divide must appreciate and make efforts to eschew as the beginning of the change.
He said with such strong and neutral institutions, governments in power would not have to be angry with any media outlet for speaking truth to power by highlighting the implications of policies.
“Governments should rather have the courage to subject media reviews and reports to scrutiny to see if there were any lessons in there, even though we may not like the reports,” Mr Kwetey stated.
He said if that could be done across the political divide, it would mark the beginning of the transformation the country needed.
Body politic
“As General Secretary of the NDC, my own effort is to urge my party to build a certain platform to have some conversations with the NPP on a regular basis. We are competitive, we will definitely fight for power but there should be a particular framework on which we must agree, especially, on critical things,” he said.
“This is the message I want to carry on behalf of the NDC, that we are looking forward to a close relationship with all stakeholders, get to know you and your concerns,” he said.
Citing the current economic challenges as an example, the NDC General Secretary said it came from political competitiveness over the years, which made political parties
Source: graphic.com.gh
