News:
First Rapporteur Committee on Political Affairs
February 3, 2022
Member of Parliament for Bawku Central Mahama Ayariga is advocating for the sub-regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU) to move beyond elections to how the people are governed.
According to him if institutions of democracy are not allowed to function effectively, they would lose their legitimacy; and where there are coups they would be incapable of intervening to advice and be heard by anybody in those countries.
Mr. Ayariga noted that what is happening in the sub-region is not a good development but also a lesson that, “we must go beyond elections to pay attention to the content of governance; unless this is done well and effectively, and unless democracy is delivering social good to the people and democracy can grantee peoples basic security as in Burkina Faso, Mail, Niger and in Guinea, democracy would lose credibility”.
Contributing to a statement made by the Ranking Member on Foreign Affairs, Samuel Okudzeto on the floor of Ghana’s parliament against the rampant military coups in the West African sub-region, he noted that there is the perception out there that members of government and the ruling elite only care about themselves and the welfare of their families.
“And if this continues citizens within the sub-region would lose confidence in democracy and nothing would save democracy but democracy is supposed to be a system of check and balance, “if it is removed it becomes a hollow democracy”, Mr. Ayariga emphasized.
“I get surprised when people call and say you people in that parliament, what you are doing you would cause a situation where some adventures would come and take you all from that parliament. Mr. Speaker adventures would come if this parliament is incapable of exercising a check on the Executive arm of government; is not when this House effectively checks the executive arm of Government that they would have the opportunity”.
He asserts that when the citizenry lose confidence in the judiciary administering justice and parliament advocating for the wishes and aspiration of the people and the Executive using their executive power to solve the economic problem of the people, “that is when the adventurers would move in when the elite sit there and all they do is to make themselves confortable and ignore the suffering and condition of the ordinary people in their country, that is what I have seen across the West African sub-region”.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com