Ghana Needs Moral Integrity, Goodwill To Succeed - Urge Participants In IEA Debate

A Chorus of voices at a forum in Accra has said that Ghana needs moral integrity and goodwill towards one another to deepen the country’s current political dispensation.

It maintained that the global community was currently lauding Ghana for her good democratic credentials, but maintained that what would push the national agenda forward was having the moral integrity and goodwill within the body politic.

The speakers included Brigadier-General Joseph Nunoo Mensah, the National Security Adviser; Mr K.B. Quantson, a former National Security Co-ordinator; the Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament and an acknowledged Political Scientist, Prof. Mike Oquaye, and Archbishop Palmer Buckle, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra.

In his submission, Brig. Nunoo-Mensah noted that the central problem Ghana faced was lack of moral integrity.

“It is the issue we need to face,” he told the forum debating on “Proportional Representation versus Winner-Takes-All: The Way Forward” in Accra last Monday.

The debate is the first in a series of academic discussions under The Institute of Economic Affairs Constitutional Review Processes organised by The IEA/Ghana Political Parties Programme, in collaboration with the Editors Forum of Ghana.

According to Brig. Nunoo-Mensah, there was too much corruption in the country’s body politic, saying “people pay money to get elected into political office, and they also become corrupt after they had attained political office”.

He said what Ghana needed in her body politic was how to produce men and women of integrity.

He also said the winner-takes-all syndrome was not helping the nation in her forward march to accelerated growth and development.

Mr Quantson, for his part, said if human attitudes were wrong, the democratic culture of the people would be wrong.

He said “if we paid to be elected, then we would have no moral right to talk about corruption in politics”.

He decried the situation where politicians began politics with debts, saying “it did not augur well for the nation’s well-being, because such a politician would do everything possible to recoup whatever he spent during political campaign.”

Archbishop Palmer Buckle wondered why Ghana was being lauded by the global community, and yet that fellow-feeling was lacking within the country.

He said Ghanaians needed to develop goodwill towards one another and stop the negative attitude of criticising everything in society.

He said he was always amazed at the goodwill Ghana received from the global community, with many countries expressing the wish to learn at first-hand successes chalked up in Ghana, particularly, her democratic experiment, but wondered why such a goodwill was not translated within.

Ghana, he said, had everything to become a prosperous nation, and reminded Ghanaians that “We have something I think we have not cherished; Let us begin to cherish and appreciate what we have,” he stated.