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Report By Bernard K DADZIE
The Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa Mr. Sulemana Braimah has stated categorically that there certainly is a problem with our democracy. He has said the kinds of things that we are seeing are not things that point to democratic consolidation.
According to Braimah, as a country, we are seeing all the classical evidence that point to the issue of democratic capture in our country, in terms of institutions that are being influenced, in terms of appointments of colonies into various positions, in terms of appointment of family relations into various positions, in terms of appointments of party people to occupy positions in critical state institutions.
This, he stressed are all the elements that lead to democratic capture.
“When you have a situation where the authorities in the country are putting in place mechanisms to ensure that they entrench themselves, or at least their family members, or at least their political party. Quite clearly that cannot be evidence of democratic consolidation. It is clearly a marker of democratic recession,” he pointed.
“If you read the afro-barometer reports, in terms of the level of confidence of our people in the various democratic institutions, you will see a drastic reduction, whether it is the police, whether it is the judiciary, whether it is the legislature, whether it is the presidency or the executive, you clearly have people saying that they are continuing to lose confidence in these institutions,” he said.
To him, that clearly points to a deficit in our democracy and the fact that our democracy is not strengthening rather it is weakening.
“If you look at the Press Freedom Index we have dropped from 30th to 60th in the world, and from 3rd to the 10th in Africa. It’s clearly not a positive indication. So, our country Yes, we still have the benefit of having an elected leader. We still have the benefit of speaking our minds. But increasingly these are taking a downturn than strengthen our democracy,” he added.
The Executive Director of Media Foundation for West Africa Mr Sulemana Braimah made this observation at Two-day Regional Conference on the Media, Press Freedom and the Democracy Recession in West Africa.
The Two-day conference was attended by Prof. H.K. Prempeh, Executive Director CDD Ghana, Dr. Eyesan Okorodudu, Head, Democracy and Gold Governance, Political Affairs Director, ECOWAS Commission, Ambassador Baba Gana Wakil, Resident Representative of ECOWAS in Ghana, and Prof. Kwame Karikari, Academic.
The rest are representatives from Benin, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria Union of Journalists and others.
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