Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Ghana Votes 2008

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Ghana Votes 2008

Ghana goes to the polls tomorrow to elect a new President and 240 members of Parliament under the shadow of recent electoral violence and malpractice in various African countries. Kenya and Zimbabwe had their problems this year where rigging and violence was rampant. Our neighbours Ivory Coast have once again postponed their elections. Our other not too distant neighbours, Nigeria where rigging was rife are even today after one year contesting some disputed election results. But it’s not all gloom and doom when it comes to election is Africa. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Senegal and Zambia have all had peaceful transitions of political leadership.

Democracy is young in Africa. In 1957 Ghana was the first country to win independence on this continent. In the course of its independent history civilian rule was often interrupted by military coups until democracy returned with some form of stability in 1992.

This is a multi party democracy but two parties (NPP & NDC) have ruled the roost and held sway over the country for the last 16 years. We are led to believe that there are three main contenders for the Presidency – Nana Akufo-Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Convention (NDC)

and Papa Kwesi Ndoum of the Convention People’s Party (CPP). The ruling NPP dominates in the Ashanti and Central Regions of the country and the NDC has massive support in the Volta Region and the Northern Region of Ghana.

And though Ghanaians have made it clear that they prefer democracy with all its flaws to military rule or anarchy we pray that the elections will go off peacefully and that all people will respect the outcome of this election whether it is favourable to their party or not.

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What do we want this novitiate to be?

There is a saying that goes something like this: “If we don’t do what we believe in, then we’ll end up believing in what we do”. Without a vision that is authentic and alive to guide our actions, then we can settle for rationalizing the status quo or what is convenient and comfortable.
One of the first things the new team in Tamale did was to spend time beginning to articulate its vision of a novitiate beyond the basics laid down in our Constitutions. Here are some elements of what we came up with:
Novitiate is a journey, a process that involves KNOWING, EXPERIENCING and CHOOSING.
It is an INITIATION into Christian Brother religious life, so a “rite of passage” into a new identity, a time of learning and testing.
Novitiate confronts the novices with the Brother’s vocation as a call to brotherly solidarity and community, not to privilege, status and security.
It involves exploration of the basic values of faith and vocation, and the challenge to embrace these out of personal conviction and free choice.
Novitiate means understanding that a religious vocation makes a claim on the whole of the person and his life, including his inner life, his relationships and his professional activity (ministry). Furthermore, it challenges the novice to see the dynamic inter-relationship of these areas and to learn what their integration means.
Novitiate is a time of DISCERNMENT. The novice learns more deeply who he is, and what this Christian Brother life is. There is a constant back-and-forth movement between these two poles as an answer is sought to the question, “Is this where I am meant to be? Is this the life that will enable me to find my true self in God?”