Creation of constituencies should be in the interest of peace -Cardinal Appiah Turkson

President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson is calling on “the powers that be” to be cautious in the manner with which the creation of new constituencies is currently being handled in the country.

According to him, “There are a whole lot of unfortunate incidences because three months away from the elections it’s even likely that what could otherwise have passed would now awaken. This lies within the wisdom of the leaders of the land to evaluate this.”

Cardinal Appiah Turkson made these observations in an interview with e.tv Ghana’s JOT Agyeman.

When asked his advice concerning the issue which is creating a lot of debate in Ghana, the Cardinal refrained from it noting that, “I’m refraining from directly answering your question that what would I advice because it can be prejudicial.”

Rather, he said, “Let’s expose what the problem is and entrust it to the wisdom, sagacity, prudence of the powers that be to see how they can best handle this in the interest of peace. Because you may well crave whatever type of… but if there is no peace after this election, what would be the use?”

“We may all decide to do whatever we want but if God does not bless us with a peaceful transition so that there is the environment to take all of these things, then what will be the point? We need to weigh the ups and downs of this and come out with what would advance ultimately the good of this country,” he added.

However, Cardinal Appiah Turkson also noted that the problem was because “the constitution reposes in the executive the power to create districts and therefore the executive can create districts without even consulting parliament. This is part of the things that we need to look at because the thing is that the executive has got the right and freedom to do things for him to rule and so the power to create districts lies in the hands of the executive.”

“Once he does it, the EC has the task to establish a constitutional order or whatever to make it work. It becomes a complicated issue for us now because the president who did is no more and is this new president going to have the courage to roll back?” he questioned.

He therefore cautioned government to go about the issue cautiously by “recognizing what is at stake in the interest of peace so that it doesn’t turn into some explosive experience.”

Tolerance and Peace

Cardinal Appiah Turkson also encouraged Ghanaians to recognize the youthfulness of our democracy.

“Our democracy is still young, it still needs to grow, and it needs to mature. Our democracy is still a western thing that we are trying to implement over here and we need to recognize that it goes against a whole lot of traditional resistance,” he further stated.

He explained further that there was “a big disregard for central authority and government and this just means that this system of governance still needs to be inculcated. It needs to become something that we accept culturally to work with.”

“On account of that, I ask for patience and tolerance. Patience and tolerance also means that its exercise and implementation needs refinement. We need to refine ourselves and sometimes I recognize the fact that we still need to organize some fora to get certain aspects of this,” he noted.