Editor-in-Chief of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt has asked those who claim that Ghana's multi-party democracy was originated by the National Democratic Congress under the leadership of the late former President Jerry John Rawlings to refrain from making such statements.
Ghana is often touted as a beacon of democracy and multiparty politics in Africa, since the Constitution came into effect on 28 April 1992, it has successfully organised eight successive presidential and parliamentary elections allowing the peaceful exchange of power between the two major parties.
Ghana's political history since independence was full of "cases of alternations between authoritarianism and democracy". Often-times, military takeovers truncated democratic rule making Ghana's political history a chequered one. But as things have turned out, the Fourth Republic of Ghana is standing out clearly as a true democratic transition in Ghana.
For one thing, it marks the transition from a long period of military rule and dictatorship to democracy. Most significantly, however, it has witnessed a historic transfer of power from one democratically elected government to another. In the light of this some people refer fondly to the Fourth Republic as the 'second independence of Ghana'.
Setting the record straight on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo" morning show, Kwesi Pratt stated categorically that people fought with their lives for Ghana to have multi-party democracy and that it is an error for any person to credit the NDC or the late President Rawlings.
"I get infuriated when I hear that multi-party democracy originated from the NDC. This multi-party democracy we have attained, some people lost their lives for us to arrive here. The sitting government, if it was happy with the restoration of multi-party democracy, no person would have died. No person would have been arrested", he averred.
He added that he knows "people who died because they advocated multi-party democracy. I know people who were arrested because they advocated multi-party democracy. Today, we have multi-party democracy because of the collective struggles of hundreds of thousands of people. It wasn't Jerry Rawlings who gifted us multi-party democracy; stop saying this!"
"I think it's an insult to the memory and the gallantry of those who fought for the restoration of multi-party democracy. Let's stop making such statement; it has no basis in our history!", he snapped.
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