News:
October 13, 2019
Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament, Professor Aaron Michael Oquaye is advocating for African Presidents who attempt to elongate their stay in power to be ostracized from the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West Africans (ECOWAS).
According to Speaker Oquaye, an issue like “he is the Chairman of AU or ECOWAS and it is his turn”, should be done away with and rather the focus should be on democratic principles; “we should have standards”, he added.
“Some parts of Africa people ruling today have no limitation of turner, they undermine democracy; when the European Union (EU) started Spain and Portugal apply to join despite being Europeans they were refused because their democratic credentials were not strong enough. In Africa everybody feels they have national flag and should be member of AU and ECOWAS”.
Professor Aaron Oquaye emphasised that African leaders who insist they would go their own way should be ostracized out of the Union otherwise they would pollute the Union, “ground rules should be established”.
He made this remarks when the Speaker of Gambia’s Parliament Rt. Honorable Mariam Jack-Denton called on him, as part of a study tour of Ghana’s Parliament.
“We have the West African Court of Appeals, West African Examination Council”, but lamented over the absence of West Africa Cocoa Research Institute, and queried how can ECOWAS be strong and relevant when we don’t have blocks?
According to him, the biggest form of instability on the African continent has to do with elections, and wondered why can’t we sit together, have measures in place so that no Ghanaian can register in Togo and the other way round.
“Electronic means we should have a common electoral register so that it is not possible to have your name in Togo or Ghana register, no good citizen would want to vote in two countries, we should be meeting more and learn from each other’.
Also we have not finished learning, we have had our difficult times as a nation and we are still working hard to deepen our democracy and exchange in this regard we consider to be very useful.
“Democracy is facing much difficulties otherwise you would not see what is taking place in the United States of America, though out my life I have not seen the Supreme Count of England being called to make and interpretation of political matter, even those we learn from are complaining this are the realities”.
We should learn the dynamics of disagreeing to agree and know that no one country has what I call the best model to be adopted, we continue to learn, he said.
“We are lucky our military interruptions did not end up in wars, we manage our situation to get us off crisis that others have gone through and we are going through constitutional reforms and we trust the fourth Republican constitution would be the last”
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/ghanamps.com