DEV DUE TO DEMOCRCY — TUC (SPREAD, MAY 13, 2010)

THE Trades Union Congress (TUC) says Ghana’s experience in poverty alleviation has confirmed the direct correlation between constitutional multi-party democracy and improved living conditions.
Speaking at a public lecture in Accra, the Deputy Secretary-General of the TUC, Dr Yaw Baah, stated that since the restoration of constitutional democracy and the multi-party system of governance in the country in 1992, the living standards of Ghanaians had improved progressively.
He explained that at the moment, less than six million Ghanaians lived below the poverty line of GH¢208 per annum and attributed the gains being made in poverty reduction to the democratic process.
Dr Baah was speaking at the 10th annual Constitution Week of the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) on the theme, “Poverty — A Threat to Constitutionalism and Multiparty Democracy in Ghana”.
He said the multi-party system of government engendered competition among political parties and compelled politicians to excel, which led to an increase in wealth creation.
He said it also created opportunities for education and employment and called for greater focus on education and employment for the total eradication of poverty in the country.
Another speaker, Mr Kofi Bentum Quantson, who is a security expert, called on governments to focus on the survival, safety and well-being of the population to reduce poverty and ensure that people participated in decision-making.
He said poverty was a threat to national security because “if the people are allowed to wallow in poverty, they will become apathetic to government programmes and projects which are meant to serve them”.
Mr Quantson said the resultant effect was political destabilisation because poor people usually lacked the security consciousness for their own survival.
Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso of the University of Ghana said social, political and economic exclusion ought to be eliminated from the country’s body politic.
He explained that poverty ought to be tackled holistically, since any attempt to isolate the economic aspect without tackling the social and political exclusion of the poor could not achieve effective results.
He observed that an attempt to deal with the economic aspect separately would change the value system in the multi-party system from a system where ideas and strategies competed for the obsession with monetary and material gains.
Dr Antwi-Danso, therefore, called on the media to redirect their energies from the New Patriotic Party/ National Democratic Congress dichotomy to discussions on real development issues.
The Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission, Mr P.V. Obeng, who chaired the function, expressed concern over the magnetisation of politics in the country where the activities of foot soldiers, which used to be voluntary, were fast becoming a gold mine for party faithful and nobody seemed to care, since it reared its head in the previous administration and had reared its head again in the present administration.