A consultant on International Affairs for Africa and the Middle East, Mr Abdul Akbar Muhammad, has argued that the four-year constitutional mandate for the governance of the country is not enough for a government to carry out any meaningful development. He explained that a newly elected government spent a greater proportion of its mandate cleaning what he described as “the mistakes created by the previous administration" of which Ghana was no exception. He said solving such mistakes took time, leaving in its wake, very little time for the new government to implement its development programmes, as well as prepare for the next election. In all of this, the sitting government is left with very little time to implement its policies and programmes, Mr Muhammad stated. Mr Muhammad, who is also the International Representative for Dr Louis Farrakhan, the Leader of the Nation of Islam, in an interview, was of the view that "The Westminster and American system of democracy that Ghana has adopted is not serving the interest of its people. Ghana as a developing democracy can introduce its own system where the consciousness of the, people can be raised in order to hold its leaders more accountable." Elaborating, he said the framers of the Constitution should have taken into account the fact that the current democratic dispensation left very little room for elected leaders to be accountable for the pledges they made on campaign platforms. Rather, he said, politicians resorted to the use of vote-buying to cover up for their reneged promises. Mr Muhammad, who is currently visiting Ghana, is of the belief that the low level of consciousness of the electorate had created space for politicians to use them to achieve their selfish ends after which they were "dumped". He called for a paradigm shift to that vicious cycle by developing institutions to produce more educated and informed citizenry. Expressing disdain at the use of money to influence the outcome of elections in Africa, particularly, from foreign sponsorship, he said every effort must be made to halt that practice. According to Mr Muhammad, given the prevailing poverty situation in the country, a political party stood the chance of winning an election not on the basis of its message of credibility and competence but by the influence of money. He said when this happened, leaders craved for power to enrich themselves rather than serve the interest of the nation. He underscored the need for the government to protect its newly discovered oil resource from foreign dominated interest in order for the people to derive the maximum benefits from it. Source: Daily Graphic