Former President John Dramani Mahama says nationalism and patriotism have become deficient in Ghana today.
“Absolutely, nobody thinks about the country first. We all think about ourselves first, our families second, our parties third may be, our communities fourth and Ghana comes about a distance fifth or sixth or event 10th,” he stated on Friday in Accra at the induction of the first batch of students of the Ghana Institute of Social Democracy (GISD), a party school of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
The GISD courses outlined in this module include Political Leadership; Party Organisation and Political Activism, the History of the NDC, the Philosophy, Principles and Practice of Social Democracy.
Former President Mahama said the GISD was a very useful institute; and that it was going to be a source of knowledge, not only for party cadres but for people who had the ideological orientation of social democracy to gain ideas of leadership, nationalism and patriotism.
“And so if this Institute not only trains cadres for the Party to let them understand the ideological underpinnings of the NDC; because in 2002, we adopted Social Democracy as our Party’s philosophy,” he said.
“And yet if we ask Party cadres all over the country what social democracy is? We will get different interpretations of what social democracy is. And in many cases most of our people are ignorant reading what it is. And so we find that developing in the Party tendencies that are not borne out by social democracy.”
He cited some of the tendencies as self-interest, parochialism, lack of unity, divisiveness, undermining colleagues and cadres.
Former President Mahama said these were the kinds of things that understanding the ideological underpinnings of a party would help us avoid.
He encouraged the Party cadres and the youth to take advantage of these courses and partake in the Party’s leadership training programme.
He also urged the NDC to contract the GISD to organise short term courses for the Party cadres and the youth at the regional level to teach them party youth activism and the underpinnings of social democracy.
He said establishing the GISD was a very useful investment, which the Party had ventured into; and he fully appreciated it.
Former President Mahama said the GISD was not the first attempt to set up a Party school or an ideological training institute in Ghana.
