Build excellent relations with competitors - Parties urged

Accra, Oct 29, GNA - Ms Joyce Aryee, Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, on Tuesday urged political parties to build excellent relations with their competitors, saying, it would benefit them if they learned from the way their competitors managed their affairs.

Delivering this year's Annual Public Relations Week lecture in Accra, Ms Aryee noted that maintaining good and friendly relations among political parties could be done without compromising what they individually stand for.

"All political, parties see each other as competitors, and on the Ghanaian political landscape, the word competitors is spelt with capital letters and bolded.

But relating with even our sharpest competitors can be beneficial if we choose to learn from the way they manage their affairs. Good Public Relations will help us to do this and take advantage of what we can learn from our competitors - in party politics, we must never see other parties as enemies," Ms Aryee said.

Ms Aryee, the first female to deliver the annual lecture, since it began in 1992, spoke on "A Decade of Multi Party Democracy - The Case of Public Relations".

The lecture dwelt on the application of Public Relations in building and sustaining effective bridges in ensuring democratic growth, transparency, accountability of public office holders and good governance.

Ms Aryee emphasised Public Relations as a leadership functions and stated that under the Directive Principles of State Policy, the President and his government team have a responsibility to relate to various external and internal publics, adding that, the relationships should fulfil the aspirations in the principles.

She said Ghanaians want to live together as a strong homogeneous society, in spite of their ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. Multi-party democracy is not meant to disintegrate the society, but rather to help Ghanaians bring their diversities together to enrich their thinking and behaviour.

Ms Aryee said the leaders of the ruling and opposition parties must ensure strong links between themselves, individuals and groups, adding that, the government must establish links with its competitors, the legislature and the judiciary.

"What our nation needs is a strong sense of belonging to one another. The sense that each of us has a role to play in building a strong corporate Ghana and that our belongingness to different groupings, do not make us antagonists.

This aspect of Public Relations practice must be embedded in the subconscious of each citizen of the land," Ms Aryee, who formerly held the portfolios of Information and Education, said and called on the Institute of Public Relations to take up the challenge. Mr Osei Bimpong, President of IPR, announced that Ms Aryee would be made a fellow of the Institute on Friday.