Country needs humane government - GCPP

Mr Dan Lartey, Leader of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), said on Thursday that the country needed a humane government that would depend more on the country's resources to develop rather than rely largely on foreign assistance.

"We must be proud of the abundant technical and managerial skills we have in the country and begin to depend on them," he told the Ghana News Agency in an interview.

Mr Lartey lauded the achievement of Mr Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, and said, "a nation that has produced the calibre of Mr Annan should not lack technical skills to the extent of depending on foreigners to resolve its internal problems".

He said the party would hold its National Delegates' Congress in September next year but before that it would undertake a programme to reorganise its structures at the regional and national levels.

Delegates to the congress would include, the national chairman, two national vice-chairmen, treasurer, general secretary, all party members in parliament and ministers (if any), two delegates duly elected by each constituency.

The rest are members of the regional executive committee, members of the national executive committee, members of the national working committee and members of the board of trustees.

Mr Lartey said the GCPP, which did not win any parliamentary seat in last year's elections, was ready to break the political dominance of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) with a leftist progressive democratic government.

Mr Lartey said a GCPP government would take steps to ensure political stability, promote national reconciliation and unity and to safeguard the freedom of the people. The party would create the necessary atmosphere for citizens to participate effectively in the national democratic process and ensure that the civil rights of citizens were not violated.

Mr Lartey said the GCPP, through the policy of domestication, would bring about, as speedily as possible, the economic and social reconstruction of the country.

It would safeguard the wealth of the nation and use it in the supreme interest of the people.

Mr Lartey said the GCPP has structures that differ from those of other political parties in the country.

"The leader of the party is the overall head and stands automatically as the party's presidential candidate."