Show tolerance towards opposing views -NCCE

Koforidua, April 27, GNA- The Eastern Regional Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), Mr Emmanuel Quaye-Sowah, has stressed the need for Ghanaians to exhibit maximum tolerance towards one another's diverse views in order to maintain national peace and stability, especially in this election year.

He stated that the nation could not afford to allow "the menace of intolerance, violence and destruction to erode all the gains that we have made so far along the path of democratic practice over the past 12 years."

Mr Quaye-Sowah made the call at a news briefing at Koforidua on Tuesday, to herald the celebration of the Fourth "Constitution Week" with the theme, "National integration through tolerance."

The annual celebration of the "Constitution Week" is launched on April 28, to commemorate the popular adoption of the 1992 Fourth Republican Constitution through a national referendum.

Mr Quaye-Sowah described this year's theme as "more apt in this election year when the political barometer is bound to make inevitably high readings," and noted that both the religious and ethnic fronts "are not as yet calm as all of us would have expected."

He noted that most often, intolerance had accounted for the political and ethnic conflicts and communal strives that some nations have suffered, and cautioned: "our nation stands threatened if we do not make a conscious effort to tolerate other people's views."

Mr Quaye-Sowah said the Eastern Regional directorate of the Commission had planned a total of 60 activities to be carried out during the Week involving lectures, symposia, public fora, clean-up campaigns and gala football matches to be organised in each of the 15 districts.