The Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD Ghana) has outlined a list of questions on crucial issues in the country's political economy that need to be addressed by political parties, as well as presidential and parliamentary aspirants contesting the 2008 elections. The questions, which were developed by experts of the non-governmental democratic institution, cover a wide range of issues on education, agriculture, food security, gender, youth, health, energy, industry, water, environment, anti-corruption, drug trade, government/governance, decentralisation, Parliament, disability and penal reforms. "CDD-Ghana deems the upcoming elections in Ghana as very crucial to the consolidation of Ghana's democracy", a statement signed by the Executive Director, Prof E. Gyimah-Boadi, noted. On education, CDD-Ghana demands answers from presidential aspirants on what they would do to ensure that children who graduated from the public schools were functionally literate and numerate; the attainment of targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and their thoughts on the "One laptop per child" project. Issues relating to the agriculture sector and how to find solutions to them, food security, rising food prices and modernisation of the sector are some of the concerns the CDD-Ghana expects the aspirants to address. On gender, the issues are centred on how the aspirants would increase women's participation in public life at all levels in the country, particularly at the district level; the elimination of feminisation of poverty; education of the girl child; and establishing the necessary structures to support provisions in the Domestic Violence Act. The CDD wants aspirants to political leadership to enumerate how they would prepare the youth of the country for a productive and satisfying future. This is captured in its words "What ideas do you have for giving them hope for the future?" Questions on health, centred around policies and programmes to ensure appreciable standards of health for Ghanaians, comparable to developed countries. Aspirants were to show how to achieve that in order that Ghanaian political elites would not have to be flown abroad for medical care. Other questions were on how the National Health Insurance Scheme could be strengthened and sustained, how research into plant medicine through centres like the Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine at Mampong could be bolstered, as well as the creation of additional institutions. Measures to address the brain drain of medical staff and the eradication of guinea worm were also key issues for candidates to address. On energy, aspirants were to show how to effect specific and legal changes to ensure that proceeds from the country's oil were not squandered through political corruption and profligate spending. How communities living in proximity to these resources become chief beneficiaries, the diversification of the country's energy resource, full cost recovery for the electricity sub-sector, while ensuring affordable electricity for all villages in the country were other issues that candidates needed to make clear statements on. They also had to state how to make the production and distribution of clean water efficient, while the accessibility of the basic commodity was also a question to be addressed. How to improve the competitiveness of the private sector, empower the domestic private sector and indigenous entrepreneurs, prescriptions for the labour market of the country and reforms in districts to make them economically viable were issues for candidates to respond to. Improving, environmental sanitation and the menace of plastics on the environment were also key issues for candidates to address. Candidates were to respond to how to reform the assets declaration regime in the country to compel all senior public office holders, elected or appointed, to update the declaration of their assets on a regular basis as an anti-corruption measure. Coupled with that, practical steps were to be outlined by them to eradicate the entrenched narcotic business in the country that was making the country acquire the global reputation as the "Coke Coast". On governance, how candidates were to correct deficits in the country's governance and democracy enumerated in the diagnosis of the Ghana APRM, and their priorities for immediate action on the assumption of office was one issue. Other issues were alternative proposals for funding political parties and a bill to regulate Trusts and NGOs in the country. Candidates are to respond to whether they would push for the abolition the MPs’ Common Fund and their views on the current system where MPs become agents of infrastructural development in the constituencies instead of legislators. The appointment or election of Municipal and District Chief Executives were also key issues. On penal reforms, the CDD wanted responses to policies to reverse the looming crisis in the criminal justice sector with 60 per cent overcrowded prisons and the abysmally high period of time spent by some on remand. Accessibility of the disabled to public buildings and compliance measures to be employed for provisions in the Disability Act were the questions on disability. CDD said these were questions that "political parties must answer to win our votes on December 7, 2008." Source: Daily Graphic