Ghana, Sierra Leone Political
Parties Dialogue to Promote Tolerance
Accra, Nov. 29. GNA - Political parties from
Ghana and Sierra Leone on Wednesday began a
two-day meeting in Accra to brainstorm on how to
deepen multi-party democracy in the West Africa
Sub-Region through dialogue.
The meeting is said to be an icebreaker for
Leaders of the various political parties in
Sierra Leone and their Ghanaian counterparts to
share experiences and promote political
tolerance in their respective countries.
It is part of a broader programme of the West
African Regional Programme of Political Parties,
which the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)
Ghana and the Netherlands Institute for
Multi-Party Democracy began implementing in
2005.
Addressing the meeting, Professor Daniel Adzei
Bekoe, Chairman of the Advisory Council of the
IEA Political Parties Programme, noted that
parties in West Africa faced serious problems of
political intolerance both within and between
parties.
"Political tolerance is the very oxygen on which
democracy thrives. The weaker the political
tolerance within a party, the weaker the party,"
he said.
Prof. Bekoe, who is also the Chairman of the
Council of State, said political tolerance
provided the predisposing conditions for power
sharing when the need arose to save countries
from the brink of democratic breakdown.
"Our parties in West Africa also suffer from an
acute deficit of party discipline," he said,
adding that defeated competitors for party
positions often found it easier to exit from the
party rather than honourably accept defeat and
stay on to make further contributions to the
party.
"Such actions do not contribute to democracy,"
Prof. Bekoe said.
"In a democracy, it is a fact that there will
always be losers and winners and the beauty of
democracy is that today’s losers can be
tomorrow’s winners and vice versa," he said.
Prof. Bekoe said the cooperation between
political parties was only a logical extension
to the long record of social and economic
cooperation between the two countries.
Representatives of the various political parties
both in Ghana and Sierra Leone in their
introductory statements stressed the need to
cooperate to promote tolerance for the
betterment and deepening of democracy in the
Sub-Region.
Nine delegates, three from each political party
in Sierra Leone are attending the meeting. The
three parties are Peace and Liberation Party (PLP);
All Peoples Party (APP) and Sierra Leone
People’s Party (SLPP).
Representatives from Ghana are from the New
Patriotic Party (NPP); National Democracy
Congress (NDC); People’s National Convention
(PNC) and the Convention People’s Party (CPP).
GNA
