By Kenneth Thompson
Centre for the Coordination of Youth Activities, CCYA Sierra Leone has partnered with the Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD in Nigeria to launch a “popularization campaign on two regional documents” to commemorate the International Day of Democracy.
Executive director of CCYA, Ngolo Katta said that “The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance” and “The ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Governance,” had been ratified by the country and therefore needed to be popularized by the media and civil society.
He said the former elicited laid down guidelines on how a democratic state should operate through an elected government, adding that “there should be adherence to separation of powers, regular, free, fair and credible elections conducted by competent elections bodies”. He said the rule of law should be adhered to in maintaining independence of the judiciary.
Katta stated that the two documents demanded that there should be absolute freedom of the press and the right to access information from state institutions should be guaranteed.
He added that it was the responsibility of the media and civil society to educate the public further on the contents of the documents.
The civil society activist explained that the ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Governance was in support of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance.
Public affairs secretary of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists, Abubakarr Bah, called on government “not to waste any more time in passing the freedom of information bill into law because it is one of the key pillars of a functional democracy”.
He said granted that there were some “reckless journalists”, but it was still necessary that an FOI law was in place. He called on his colleagues to be “credible, professional and objective for a sustained democracy and for their own development”.
The CDD executive director, Yusuf Shamsudeen Adio, commended civil society and the media for their role in the last elections.
He urged them to play the same role in popularising the documents as his organization in Nigeria was doing the same.
(C) Politico 19/08/13
