President John Dramani Mahama has called on the clergy to call politicians who spew indecent and abusive words to order.
His comment comes on the back of recent allegations made by Assin Central Member of Parliament Kennedy Agyapong, who, on a political platform, suggested that Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Mrs Charlotte Osei exchanged sex for her position.
Mr Mahama, addressing members of the clergy and the business community in the Ashanti region on Thursday June 30 charged the clergy to whip politicians in line.
“Often when elections are coming up, the political rhetoric ratchets up and very careless statements are made. Very unfortunate statements like one made just recently that everybody has been talking about. And when things happen like that and gets a bit hot, it is you the clergy and our traditional leaders who must step in and call all the politicians to order”, he stated, adding: “And your role as arbiters means you must be independent and neutral because if the clergy takes sides, then you lose the moral authority to arbitrate and so it doesn’t matter if it’s the NDC that is ratcheting up, feel free to be able to point it out to that party. It doesn’t matter if it’s NPP, we must call them to order. And it is only when we do that that we can have the moral authority to be able to arbitrate in this political regime”, the president added.
Mr Mahama said Ghana is bigger than any politician and reminded them [politicians] that they will not be at post forever.
“Ghana is bigger than any of us politicians. All of us will come and go. I have no delusions that I will go out of office one day. I would have played my part well. We are all actors on a stage, we come, we play our part, when you finish your part you go to the back stage and new actors come and take your place and that will happen to all of us and so sometimes when our heads get hot it’s your duty to call us to order and let us remember that Ghana will exist long after all of us are gone”.
The president called on Ghanaians to prove to the world that Ghana is a leader in democratic governance as they head to elections later in the year.
“There are interesting prospects coming up but we need to strengthen our governance issues first and as you know, we have an election this year and so we need to once again show to the whole of Africa and the world that Ghana is one of the leading democracies that exist on this planet. In Africa, we are called the beacon of democracy and the whole world recognises that Ghana is a model of democracy” he noted.
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