A senior research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs [IEA] Dr Micheal Ofori Mensah has stated that Ghana’s democracy is characterised with institutional failures.
Delivery his address on Tuesday in a round table discussion organised by IEA to review the Transitional Act, he said the transition record of Ghana is not one that the country can be proud off.
“After 24 years of continues democratic rule in Ghana we are writing as an….. as a model of democracy in Africa and much of these actually holds on the successive elections we’ve had which has been peaceful and more importantly regime change through the ballot box but I found it somehow ironic that the process of regime change has itself revealed institutional failure in our democracy, and in fact the short term has undermine Ghana’s democratic credentials to some extent. Ghana’s record on transition is not a proud one and that is due to the history of coup d’etats because of this it was in 2001 that the country experience it first transition.â€
According to him if the Administrator General’s office should have been well resourced, most of these failures will not have been uncounted.
“If the administrator general have been resourced to do it job and have been in control of the presidential enclave I think it will not be prerogative of an outgoing administration or an incoming administration to decide who get what, that will be the decision of the administrator general. And that institutional failure is what more or less contributed to this saga, now the administrator general office also has been more or less running on empty….. we all heard the administrator general telling us it outlet was so poorly resourced.â€
The recent transition between the National Democratic Congress [NDC] and the New Patriotic Party [NPP] has seen a lot of accusations and counter-accusations, some handing over documents not ready by the expected time among other issues faced by the process.