Politicians have caged Ghanaians - Ankomah

Accra, June 30, GNA - Mr. Owusu Ankomah, a 59-year old Independent Presidential aspirant in the Election 2004, on Wednesday said his government would amend the 1992 Constitution to place the affairs of the country into the hands of chiefs because politicians have put Ghanaians in a "cage".
"The colonial administration even recognized this and heavily relied on them for the governance of the country, therefore, it's only prudent for chiefs to be made the focal point in the political administration of the nation," he said.
Mr. Ankomah, who announced his candidature for the Presidency in the 2000 elections but later withdrew citing biases and insensitivity and unfairness by the Electoral Commission against him, said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Wednesday.
He said: "Politicians have proven to be ineffective to run this country and today Ghanaians have been put in a "cage" and can't do things for themselves because they have allowed global dictators like the United States to continue to take decision for us".
Mr. Ankomah, an Electronic Technician, said he was against partisan politics, which tended to divide the people, adding that the current political dispensation had ended up with factions with entrenched position on every national issue.
Mr. Ankomah said most political leaders in the system who were elected into office to produce results for the people kept boring them with rhetoric and big promises.
He said they did more political talking than settling down to the task of finding workable solutions to the nation's problems. For this reasons, he advocated for a kind of democracy that was fashioned along the lines of Ghanaian culture and traditions, which recognised and accepted our traditional rulers as the most competent and efficient leaders of the country.
On the economy, Mr. Ankomah blamed the evils of corruption and mismanagement as the main poison, in that conservativeness and selfishness had crippled the country. He said to achieve rapid industrial growth he would reactivate all viable, but run-down industries with emphasis on workers to buy out state owned enterprises including the state owned media. On education, the Independent Candidate said the current concept was mainly imported making the Ghanaian a second rate citizen even in his or her own country.
He blamed the high level of indiscipline in the country on the wholesale adoption of Western culture to the detriment of the Ghanaian culture.