Addressing the 2nd ECOWAS Parliamentary Seminar held in Winneba in the Central Region of Ghana, he blamed leaders who resort to manipulation of the constitution of their countries to prolong their term in office.
“Today, four ECOWAS member states are led by military governments as a result of coup d’etat”.
He said this developments has created tension in every corner of the region which he said has raised the regional instability.
“Democracy in west Africa is in danger we must work even harder to entrench the principles of democratic accountability in the citizenry,” Ghana’s president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
He further outlined “three serious threat” being faced by the regional democracy:
- The attempted confiscation by elites who engages truly in the antics in the manipulation of constitutional rules and the segregation of the institutions of the republic with soul main of remaining in power.
- Emerging of re-militarization of governance with return once again of the military onto the political scene with neither consulted nor received any mandate from the people of whose behalf they purport to act.
- The wanting desire to destroy democracy by terrorist groups and arms criminal gangs who seek to establish rules of lawlessness in the absence of freedom in our region.
The Ghanaian leader reaffirmed that, in the contemporary world, the only legitimacy for any leader is the soul mandate that is freely given by the people in the fair, peaceful and transparent election.
The president believes finding the root causes of military insurrections will better place the sub-region in dealing with the recent security challenges that threaten the peaceful democracies within the ECOWAS bloc.
