The Culture Of Protective Electoral Democracy By Political Parties Must Stop - Atik Mohammed

Embattled General Secretary of the People's National Convention (PNC), Atik Mohammed has called on political parties, particularly the New Patriotic Party (NPP) which goes into their primaries this Saturday, to uphold internal electoral democracy.

According to Atik Mohammed, the parties should not be seen shielding some candidates and using devious means to disqualify others from holding positions in the parties.

He was discussing the NPP Presidential and Parliamentary Primaries scheduled for June 20.

Speaking to host Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo', Atik Mohammed bemoaned the subculture in partisan politics where the leadership of a particular party protects some aspirants against others in order to ensure some people contest unopposed just because the party leadership has their favourites.

To him, there should be an attitudinal change to embrace an electoral democracy which is all-inclusive and not discriminatory.

"We shouldn't use devious ways to disqualify the person because there is somebody else we feel we should protect. In democracy, there is nothing like protection. In electoral democracy, in participatory democracy, there's nothing like protection. If we begin to qualify democracy with some of this characteristics that we can have protective democracy meaning we'll intentionally disqualify some people not because they're ineligible but we will find a way to remove them because we feel somebody deserves to go unopposed, it weakens that sense of internal democracy...If we allow this subculture to grow, we will be verging on democratic collapse...", he said.