[ 2014-11-23 ]

Strenthening freedom and democracy; meeting new challenges”
STATEMENT BY NANA AKUFO-ADDO, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL
CANDIDATE OF THE NEW PATRIOTIC PARTY, AT THE
CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL DEMOCRATIC UNION
(IDU) IN SEOUL, REPUBLIC OF KOREA, ON 21ST
NOVEMBER, 2014

ON

“STRENGTHENING FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY; MEETING
NEW CHALLENGES”

It is with considerable pleasure that the Ghanaian
delegation from the New Patriotic Party has come
all the way from Accra, capital of Ghana in West
Africa, to this splendid city of Seoul, capital of
Korea in East Asia, to attend this year’s IDU
Conference. Korea is one of the great success
stories of the modern era, a country which, within
a generation, transformed itself from a poor,
agrarian economy into a leading industrial power,
and, happily, it is a sister party, the Saenuri
Party, that has the democratic mandate to manage
its affairs.

It is now generally accepted that we, who are
gathered here and other like- minded people, have
won the ideological battle that raged for much of
the twentieth century. We, who advocated for a
multi-party system of government, backed by the
rule of law and respect for human rights and a
market economy, driven by private enterprise, have
won the battle of ideas. But the war to build a
better world by strengthening freedom and
democracy is far from over.

Let me use our experience in my country, Ghana, to
tell you some of the challenges that we now face
as we seek to strengthen freedom and democracy.

My party, the New Patriotic Party, though
technically only twenty-two years old, is born of
a political tradition that goes back some seventy
years. That tradition has been principally
responsible for leading the fight for democracy in
our country. Even at the height of the Cold War,
our political forebears never wavered, even at
great personal cost, in their insistence that
democratic ideals and a market economy represented
a surer path to progress than the authoritarian,
one-party socialist model then fashionable in the
so-called Third World. They rejected the view that
you had to give up many freedoms to be able to
have rapid development.

Hence in 1992, at the inauguration of the Fourth
Republic, when we formed the NPP, we adopted the
slogan “Development in Freedom” as our
catchphrase to reflect our philosophy.
Elections, and dare I use the cliché, free and
fair elections, remain the bedrock of a true
democracy and the running of credible elections
pose a big challenge to many democracies.

The need for credible elections is critical. It
allows the popular will to be accurately
reflected, which, in turn, reinforces the
legitimacy of democratic institutions.

New technologies have largely helped to eliminate
the age old problems with fraud in the electoral
process in many parts of the world. We still have
problems with the credibility of our electoral
register and the voting process.

My party went to the Supreme Court to contest the
results of the 2012 elections and, even though the
Court in the end gave a 5-4 split decision against
us, there have been a lot of unintended
consequences for the country. One was that, for
the first time in our country’s history,
judicial proceedings were televised to the public
and this has helped to demystify the justice
system to the ordinary people, which can only
strengthen freedom and democracy. The proceedings
also revealed the imperfections of our electoral
system and led even the majority on the Court to
call for reform.

I am proud to say that, today, Ghana ranks high in
the freedom of the press league and the NPP can
claim that we led that fight. When our party came
into government in 2001, we quickly repealed the
Criminal Libel Law which had inhibited the press
for years from doing its work as a public
watchdog. My modest self had the honour, as
Attorney General, of piloting the passage of the
repeal through our Parliament.

The opening of the airwaves to private enterprise
has improved governance in general and led to a
feeling of inclusiveness among the population.

Mass poverty remains the biggest problem that we
have as a nation and it poses the most serious
challenge to freedom and democracy. This is what
gives my party the strong desire to work to win
power at the next elections in December 2016 to
continue the work we did to critical acclaim
between 2001 and 2008. We believe that the example
of Korea, which began life as an independent
nation at the same time and in the same shape as
our own, is one we can effectively emulate in
Ghana to spearhead the rapid transformation and
modernisation of our economy and society, and,
thereby, raise rapidly the living standards of our
people.

Finally, a lot of work needs to be done to ensure
that the operation of the regional and continental
organisations – in the case of Africa, such as
ECOWAS and the AU – which increasingly dominate
many areas of our lives, is imbued with the
democratic ideals and values that binds us
together in the IDU, so that freedom and democracy
can be strengthened to meet the new challenges of
our times.


DEVELOPMENT IN FREEDOM

Thank you for this opportunity for the Ghanaian
delegation.

Source - NPP Directorate

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