‘Our party politics is not healthy’ – Duncan-Williams laments mismanaged democracy

Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams, General Overseer of the Action Chapel International Ministry, has lamented the vindictive nature of present-day politics stressing that it was the bane of our development.

The clergyman, popularly referred to as ‘The Papa’ also expressed concern over the manner in which parties in government unduly target political opponents to the extent of collapsing their businesses or rendering them bankrupt.

Speaking during the August 20 sermon at Action Chapel, Archbishop Duncan-Williams said it was time for people to also shed unnecessary partisanship and commit to the national good.

“The fact that you are loyal to your party and you help your party to win an election does not mean you have the capacity to govern with your party.

“If people are not part of your party but they have the capacity to do something to advance the course of the country, you must give them the opportunity for the sake of the good of the country,” he emphasised.

“As a nation, we must have a national agenda that compels every political party in our country to work together so that when any party comes into office, it is not your manifesto or agenda that matters but what matters is a national agenda that allows for continuity because what we are doing now is not sustainable.”

He observed that whiles locals struggle because of politics, foreign businesses often set up and thrive because of what he called the mismanagement of democracy.

“We are allowing strangers, foreigners to come into this country and to prosper and to do well while the citizens are not doing well because of the way we are managing our democracy. Our party politics is not healthy,” he said.

He cued in on the political duopoly in Ghana, which he said was a growing trend across the continent.

He said in the case of Ghana, that political reality was at the heart of the struggle to win political power just to main illicit economic benefits from being in power.

“Today, we live in a country since the Fourth Republic and it is not just Ghana but I see it everywhere in the African nations, where you find two political parties diving the country because if one party comes into office, the other party in opposition and their members suffer.

“They are literally bankrupt, undermined, and destroyed and so when they also come and this party is out of power, they also want to settle scores.

“So we don’t have sustainable wealth because everyone is waiting for an opportunity so that they can come in and when they come in they destroy the other party’s members because they were destroyed.

“So if you are NDC and NPP comes into office, the members of NPP will have to bankrupt your business, kill your business and you go into exile and you suffer so NDC waits and when they come into the office they go after all the businessman of NPP and finish them.

“It has become a vicious cycle, what we are doing is not sustainable and we are doing it in the name of democracy, that is not democracy.”

“I am not impressed with what is going on. With this thing where people don’t work or create anything, but they are sitting down only to wait for their party to come so they can get a deal.”