Alhaji Mohammed Frimpong, General Secretary of NDP
Smaller political parties outside Parliament have blasted the main opposition National Democratic Congress for boycotting the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) that makes proposals for electoral reforms through the Electoral Commission.
Making the condemnation of the NDC’s unfortunate posture towards EC’s electoral reforms at a press conference in Accra on Wednesday, spokesperson for the smaller parties, Alhaji Mohammed Frempong of the National Democratic Party (NDP), described NDC’s attitude as unfortunate and irresponsible.
The smaller parties also condemned the NDC for always belittling smaller parties outside Parliament, stressing that they would continue to participate and contribute in decision making at IPAC meetings towards electoral reforms that seek to strengthen the country’s democracy.
“The NDC should not forget that the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and to some extent the People’s National Convention (PNC) derived from the People’s National Party (PNP) had once formed government and been in Parliament. Their present situation does not diminish their intelligence and policy relevance,” the parties said.
According to the NDP General Secretary, in keeping with a sound pluralistic atmosphere, the participation by other political parties outside Parliament has been and continues to be beneficial in nurturing the country’s multi-party democracy.
He noted that impediments to widening the frontiers of participation of the citizenry and other political parties must not be accepted in the era of information technology and demand for national accountability.
“Even though other political parties outside Parliament may be facing dire resource challenges, we have the wealth of ideas, commitment and sincerity that match or even surpass that of the duopoly in Parliament. Indeed, it is also a known fact that we nurture and fertilise opinions of our citizenry in alternatives from which the duopoly pick a leaf or two,” he said.
He said that “it is a common knowledge that in a democracy, obsession with desire for power does not translate into an entitlement when all parties must subject themselves to rules and processes.”
According to the smaller parties, the arguments advanced by the NDC in its supposed alternate reforms could have been better stated and shared at the IPAC meeting and not outside.
“To consider its boycott of IPAC as temporary and to rejoin at any future date will just be a ploy to attract undeserved public attention, a disappointment and a dereliction of duty to its supporters,” the spokesperson said.
He said when NDC was in government, all other political parties supported the stance by the NDC that the then Chairperson of the EC, Charlotte Osei, should not compile a new voters’ register,” adding “It is a dictatorial and seditious attitude to think that the NDC should always have its way.”
“We have seen the New Patriotic Party in a minority which also pursued its demands but never boycotted IPAC. The premises of the EC equally, if not more, has been militarised in the tenure of Madam Charlotte Osei when NDC was in power. There must be a decent closure to every dispute pursued appropriately by a democratic process or adjudicated at competent court of jurisdiction.”
They said that “political grandstanding in casting aspersions and innuendoes at democratically mandated state institutions smacks of deliberate sedition that the state has obligation to nip in the bud.”
The smaller parties, therefore, appealed to the NDC to place its wisdom gourd on its back so that together all political stakeholders could help reach the zenith of the country’s democracy.
By Thomas Fosu Jnr