President Akufo-Addo has praised the country’s effort as regards the practice of democracy.
According to him, whatever Ghana has achieved in this regard has been done by Ghanaians.
The President said this when he delivered the 67th Independence Day anniversary speech on March 6, at Koforidua in the Eastern Region.
The celebration was held under the theme, “Our Democracy, Our Pride.”
President Akufo-Addo said. “… we have good reason to choose as our theme and to celebrate OUR DEMOCRACY, OUR PRIDE at the 67th anniversary of our independence. We are a democratic nation, and not every country can make such a claim. It is important to note that the democratic system of government we have today was not given to us at independence; more than a hundred years (100) of British rule had not prepared us in any way for democracy, there is nothing democratic about colonial rule, and, whatever we have today, we have worked out for ourselves.”
He added that, “All the defining elements of a democracy, that are part of our governance architecture today, we have had to fabricate ourselves. Everything we know about elections today, and we know quite a bit, we have learnt through hard practice, and, in the past thirty-one (31) years, we have been stable.”
President Akufo-Addo acknowledged though that “We have not got a perfect system, but, every time we have had elections during this 4th Republic, it has been an improvement on the previous occasion. We still have a lot more to learn especially when it comes to the tolerance of opposing views. But we also know that we dare not relapse, as there are many examples of countries that have disintegrated into chaos as a result of disputed elections.”
