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Political parties must endeavour to make promises and pledges based on scientific research that ascertain the real needs of the people, the Chairman of the National Commission for Civic Education, Mrs Charlotte Osei, has stated. She explained that with the real needs of the people in mind, the political parties would be able to meet the pressing concerns of the people. The Chairman of the NCCE, Mrs Charlotte Osei, made the call at a Round Table discussion on Education in Accra on Wednesday. Although, all the political parties were invited and confirmed their participation, only the Progressive People�s Party (PPP), Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP) and Democratic People�s Party (DPP) attended the programme which was organised specifically for the political parties. In a research conducted by the NCCE this year on issues of concern to the Ghanaian voter, the respondents placed education as their first priority. The findings which were made public in August this year indicated that most Ghanaians placed education as the first priority, followed in order of importance by health, employment, welfare of women and children, agriculture, roads, infrastructure and corruption. The rest are social services, sports, economy, energy, national security, housing and youth. The study, on the topic: "Election 2012: Matters of Concern to the Ghanaian Voter" was carried out in March 2012 with the main purpose of identifying the important matters that were of concern to the Ghanaian voter with the view to informing issues-based campaigning towards the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. Mrs Osei noted that education was very crucial to the development of any country, explaining that with education, the country could make a lot of strides and changes. For his part, the Chairman for the occasion, Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso, was of the view that the Ghanaian electorate were inundated with unattainable promises, including the moon, simply because the politicians failed to ask the voter what they needed before they incorporated such promises into their �vuvuzela manifesto�. He commended the NCCE for the bold and brilliant decision to conduct a scientific research to know what the electorate needed from their governments when they were voted into power, and advised political parties to use the NCCE research findings to draw up their manifestos. Dr Antwi-Danso who is also a Senior Research Fellow of the Legon Centre for International Affairs and Development (LECIAD), expressed shock that political parties would absent themselves from such an important national programme. He described Ghana as a country with a Constitution but not practicing constitutionalism because various governments had failed woefully over the years to allow institutions created by the Constitution to flourish and work independently. He said Ghanaian politicians had succeeded in politically colouring every aspect of Ghanaian life, especially to the extent that �even crime is gaining political colour�. Responding to Dr Antwi-Danso�s call for politicians to address the needs of the people as captured in the research report, Mr T.N. Ward-Brew of the DPP said some of electorate, particularly those living in the so-called strongholds of some parties behaved like �zombies�. He explained that although the people had come out with their pressing needs as captured in the research report, they would not vote for the political party that would promise to address them but rather the political party they supported, irrespective of the fact such parties would not cater for their needs. He cautioned those political parties promising freebies to take into consideration the capacity and resource base of the nation to cater for those promises they were making, and also advised them to remember that even Dr Kwame Nkrumah whose regime brought about a lot of free things was dethroned. Mr Ward-Brew made it clear that he and his political party would not promise and give anything free, and that �if the electorate will not vote for me, don�t vote for me.� A former Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Prof Emmanuel Addo Obeng, was unhappy about the politicisation of a crucial national issue such as education, where politicians play football with it and depending on who was in power, the policy must change, irrespective of the consequences. He suggested that it was high time that politicians washed their hands off education in the country even to the extent that no politicians must be appointed to head the Education Ministry, instead a technocrat must man the ministry.