Work to protect democracy
Th Deputy Chairman in charge of Operations at the National Commission for Civil Education (NCCE), Samuel Asare Akuamoah, has called for a closer collaboration with Parliament to raise awareness among Ghanaians to appreciate the need to protect the country’s democracy and Africa in general.
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He said today the ordinary man on the street was losing confidence in democratic and political institutions, a sad development that the two bodies must stand up to address.
Visit
Mr Akuamoah made the call during a visit to the headquarters of the NCCE in Accra yesterday by officials from the Departments of Public Engagement and Media Relations of Parliament.
The visit led by the Director of the Department of Public Engagement, Superintendent Afia Tenge (retd), was aimed at strengthening the partnership between Parliament and NCCE to intensify civil education among Ghanaians and raise awareness of the threats to democratic institutions.
“Today, we have the violent extremist groups in the sub-region fighting and telling the ordinary person to let them in to solve the problems that you have that governments are unable to solve,” Mr Akuamoah said.
“These groups are promising that when they come to power, they will arrest and amputate the limbs of armed robbers and corrupt elements who are not being punished.
And the people think that is the solution,” he said.
Civic engagement
Mr Akuamoah said the situation had become critical and there was, therefore, a need for democratic institutions, such as Parliament and the NCCE, to work together to heighten the awareness among the citizenry to these threats to democracy in the country and the sub-region.
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“We can marshal all the forces to go and fight whoever is engaged in coup d’ etat or undemocratic change in government but if the people on the ground say that is what we want, what will you achieve?” he said.
“So we need to take up our civic engagement to the populace to let them appreciate why there was a need to protect our democracy,” he stated.
Key partners
Ms Tenge said Parliament was charting a new path to strengthen its representational role and deepening public involvement in the work of the legislature.
She said through strategic interventions and corporate plan, the Parliamentary Service Board had come out with a four-year plan to achieve the representational goal
In line with the plan, she said Parliament had created the Public Engagement Department to concentrate on public engagement and promote inclusivity and participation of the citizenry in parliamentary business to consolidate democracy.
“Through our institutional analysis, we have realised that we cannot do much without involving some of the strategic state institutions when it comes to civic education.
“The NCCE is a very key partner if we need to get our messages to the people because they already have the infrastructure and channels and the best way we can maximise output is to reach out to the commission so we can work to reach our common goal,” she said.
