Full statement: Nana Addo’s speech at IDU, Korea

• Posted on November 24, 2014November 24, 2014
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

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.

Thank you for this opportunity for the Ghanaian delegation.