Ghana, Sierra Leone Political Parties Dialogue

Accra, Nov. 29. GNA - Political parties from Ghana and Sierra Leone on Wednesday began a two-day meeting in Accra to brainstorm on how to deepen multi-party democracy in the West Africa Sub-Region through dialogue.

The meeting is said to be an icebreaker for Leaders of the various political parties in Sierra Leone and their Ghanaian counterparts to share experiences and promote political tolerance in their respective countries.

It is part of a broader programme of the West African Regional Programme of Political Parties, which the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) Ghana and the Netherlands Institute for Multi-Party Democracy began implementing in 2005.

Addressing the meeting, Professor Daniel Adzei Bekoe, Chairman of the Advisory Council of the IEA Political Parties Programme, noted that parties in West Africa faced serious problems of political intolerance both within and between parties.

"Political tolerance is the very oxygen on which democracy thrives. The weaker the political tolerance within a party, the weaker the party," he said.

Prof. Bekoe, who is also the Chairman of the Council of State, said political tolerance provided the predisposing conditions for power sharing when the need arose to save countries from the brink of democratic breakdown.

"Our parties in West Africa also suffer from an acute deficit of party discipline," he said, adding that defeated competitors for party positions often found it easier to exit from the party rather than honourably accept defeat and stay on to make further contributions to the party.

"Such actions do not contribute to democracy," Prof. Bekoe said. "In a democracy, it is a fact that there will always be losers and winners and the beauty of democracy is that today's losers can be tomorrow's winners and vice versa," he said.

Prof. Bekoe said the cooperation between political parties was only a logical extension to the long record of social and economic cooperation between the two countries.

Representatives of the various political parties both in Ghana and Sierra Leone in their introductory statements stressed the need to cooperate to promote tolerance for the betterment and deepening of democracy in the Sub-Region.

Nine delegates, three from each political party in Sierra Leone are attending the meeting. The three parties are Peace and Liberation Party (PLP); All Peoples Party (APP) and Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP). Representatives from Ghana are from the New Patriotic Party (NPP); National Democracy Congress (NDC); People's National Convention (PNC) and the Convention People's Party (CPP).