Monday 9 January 2017

Nana Addo is president, what will change?

I am no lawyer, but it's easy for me to identify certain loopholes within the Ghanaian constitution. When someone criticizes the government or a structure within the government, what you almost always hear is that Rome wasn't built in day. I keep asking myself if due to that we should also take thousands of years to build our country to the level we all aspire and hope to see.
I believe that if  Rome wasn't built in a day, that leaves the younger generation much more room to even develop much faster than Rome took to develop. This is because they have a precedent to follow and right the wrongs that were identified within. Essentially, they should take less than what it took Rome  to develop.
We live in a proclaimed democracy where the head of the executive dictates virtually everything. Forget about the other arms of government. They are invariably disregarded in relevant matters within our democratic dispensation. Sometimes, I just wonder why our system of government is still referred to as democracy because I don't see it as such.
And I concur with what the Albert Kan Dapaah once said in a radio interview with Bernard K. Avle that "parliamentary democracy without checks and balance is worse than military rule." Ghana is a country where all bills passed by parliament always emanates from the executive branch, with parliament just rubber-stamping the bills with little or no checks at all.

Well, subsequent to the fall of the John Dramani Mahama's administration in the just ended elections, the newly elected parliamentarians are pledging to do the right thing by effectively checking the activities of the executive. Now, whether they  are just pondering to great beast or actually determined stands to be judged at the end of their first term which ends four years from now. Ghanaians have very high expectations of the elected government. From the 2016 December elections which saw a siting president lose elections in the counrty's histroy since the beginning of the 4th republic, it is clear that the citizenry is constantly getting involved in governance and is not ready to accept mediocre from any government that can not accomplish its goals. In Nana Addo's inaugural speech he  further charged the people not to be spectators but citizens and I am sure that when it comes to that, the people will stand up to the challenge especially the opposition who received much criticism when they were in power and also work hard. Further, he has promised to boost the private sector by reducing taxes and other relevant measures to drive the sector. Not forgetting the pledge he has made to the people to fight corruption with his insistence that if people want to make money from government coffers  then they should move to the private sector.
He should however not forget that Ghanaians will hold him accountable for every action and inaction in his government.


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