Manifestos must reflect National Development Plan - NDPC

By A.B. Kafui Kanyi, GNA
Ho, Sept. 25, GNA - Mr Jonathan Azasoo, Deputy Director, National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), has called on political parties to ensure that their manifestos were in line with the National Development Plan.

He said the slow pace of development in the country was due to the use of political party manifestos, which did not respond to the National Development agenda and tasked Members of Parliament (MP) to help resolve the challenge.

Mr Azasoo specifically tasked MPs to make inputs into the preparation of party manifestos to ensure that the documents were not 'against' the national agenda.

He was addressing a capacity building workshop organized by the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) in collaboration with the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) for Parliamentary Aspirants in the southern belt of the country.

The workshop, on the theme, 'Election 2016: Promoting policy-issue based debate and post-election accountability at the constituency level,' was to prepare participants for an impending parliamentary platform ahead of the December polls.

Mr Azasoo said manifestos, which were short term programmes of interest to woe electorates for votes, were largely irrelevant until they reflected national development agenda to avoid situations where politicians always said they were building foundations of the economy.

'How many times do we build foundations? In Ghana every government is building foundations because their manifestos go left when the national development plan says right and we must stop this to move forward,' he said.

Mr Azasoo said priorities and approaches may differ but the documents ought to correspond.

He said the challenge was that some MPs who were supposed to help develop manifestos of their parties were not conversant with the national development plan and urged them to acquaint themselves with the national development plan.

Mr Azasoo also asked MPs to interrogate Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies on the level of implementation of their medium term development plans and hold them accountable to ensure that public funds were not misapplied.

Madam Regina Tetteh, Coordinator of the training, said this year's parliamentary debate sought to ease growing tension in the build up to the December polls by streamlining campaign messages of political aspirants to focus on pertinent policy issues affecting vulnerable groups in the 50 purposively selected constituencies.

She said the debate would provide opportunity to Persons with Disabilities, persons living with HIV and AIDS, youth and women to interact with prospective legislators on issues affecting them to ensure their inclusion in the political and governance process.

GNA