Why the need for NDC ideological school?

Logo of the NDC institute

In 1992, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was established. The NDC was transformed from a revolutionary government of The Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) to continue its political and development agenda for Ghana.

As stated in Article 6 of the NDC Constitution, the Party was established on “the vision and leadership of His Excellency, Jerry John Rawlings” with its foundational values and principles as probity, accountability, equity, solidarity and social justice.

Though these are universal social democratic and good governance principles and practices, the NDC had to transit from its military and socialist revolutionary character of development organisation to an ideological political party and identity in 2002 and the political ideology adopted by the NDC is Social Democracy.

However, since the adoption of Social Democratic values in 2002, it took NDC fifteen years to birth an ideological institute on August 10, 2017. The ideological institute intends to shape and provide a clearly defined direction to NDC’s political activities and governance.

Social Democracy

Social Democracy is a considerable modification of the exploitative capitalist free market system. The primary intent of Social Democracy is to direct policy into ensuring social and economic equilibrium.

It focuses on egalitarian principles, such as equality of opportunity, social security and participation in decision-making. Social Democracy thrives on a dynamic and responsive principle that is constant at preventing disruption to the balance of policy and government.

Social Democracy system is nexus of eight principle-threads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference Basics On Social Democracy, 2 edition. William Ahadzie (PhD)

Why Ghana Institute of Social Democracy, GISD?

A political party serves as a carrier for modern day society’s principles, values, history and culture. Education is therefore critical in shaping, directing, and reinforcing the structure, leadership, government, the workings of the political community and society at large.

The primary aim of GISD is to provide Social Democratic ideological education, training and equipping the political workforce with abilities and capacities to become active partners in the development of their community, nation, and the continent.

The institute will serve as a nucleus of ideological education and research centre for the NDC and its leadership at all levels will be mandated to attend. In future, it will become one of the criteria for membership and office.

Its sole purpose is to achieve unification of NDC leadership and the support of the masses in achieving mutually beneficial and collective objectives.

GISD is necessitated as a result of the shortcomings of members, activists, executives and appointees understanding of Social Democratic values and principles and therefore, find it extremely difficult to promote and defend NDC’s policy decisions cogently from an ideological perspective.

This denies the electorates the understanding and acceptance that is required in order to support and defend NDC government policies and implementation.

The drawback of ideological grounding over the years has also resulted, in some cases, into manifesto promises and policy implementations that were at variance and in conflict with the social democratic values the NDC subscribes to and has led to a disconnect between Party/government and the masses.

The absence of the ideological institute has, in addition, denied the NDC the ideological pool of identifiable members from which a structured and consistent appointment and election of ideologically astute office holders within the party could have been made. This, in turn, led to capricious appointment of office holders which further gave birth to personality cults, factions and divisions within the ranks of NDC.

Conclusion

GISD has developed a timeline that is intended to reverse these deficiencies by drawing on well developed programmes that will not only inculcate social democratic knowledge but also, an ideological habit and character.

It shall do this by drawing on the large pool of intellectuals within the NDC and international resource persons from sister political parties across the globe.

This, among others, will set an exciting future for NDC and secure the future growth of Ghana.

In subsequent submissions, I shall discuss the social democratic policy-programmes that the PNDC and NDC have implemented over the years, which have become the foundational pillars upon which Ghana’s political and economic governance thrives.

Nevertheless, policy-programmes that were at conflict with social democratic systems shall also be elucidated.

By Kofi B. Kukubor| Governance and Policy Analyst| Member of the Administration Subcommittee of the GISD

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