Political parties must be development-oriented

The General Secretary of the Greater Accra Regional branch of GUTA, Nana Poku, has challenged political parties to move away from just being electioneering machines.

Rather, he urged political parties to be developmental in orientation to fulfill the aspirations of the people.

According to him, the job of political parties should be simple to bring development to citizens adding “when we hear political parties are not development-oriented, it can be troubling”.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with The New Publisher in Accra, Mr. Poku noted, “political parties are supposed to be seeking a job and the job is very simple: to bring development.”

He said it was also the responsibility of citizens who gave the job to political parties to ensure that their decisions were based on development-oriented programmes to be prosecuted by the political parties.

“We should give them the job based on their ability to prosecute a development agenda,” he said.

Political parties

He further looked at political parties in the country and compared them with political parties in developed countries.

He said in mature democracies, political parties were not merely election machines.

“They also play crucial roles as agents of interest aggregation and articulations…” he said.

Referring to Article 55 (3) of the 1992 Constitution, Mr. Poku stressed the fact that the mandate of registered political parties was to shape the will of the people, disseminate information on socio-economic and political ideas, as well as sponsor candidates for political office.

“Performing these tasks requires that political parties function as pragmatic entities…” he said.

That, he explained, meant that the parties had to be efficient organizations with an understanding of the governance and socio-economic challenges confronting the country and had the demonstrated capacity for the result-oriented policies that would realize the aspirations of their followers.

He said the workings of a political party should be such that their activities would be in sync with their constituents and such that they would command the needed funds to prosecute their agenda.