He said the Pan-African Parliament could contribute to that process by organising the election of its members through universal adult suffrage in member countries.
“I believe that this major step, when taken, will put an end to the delay in granting this House full legislative powers. The African Union must hasten its evolution into a union of people, and not merely a union of governments,” he urged.
Addressing the Second Ordinary Session of the Pan-African Parliament at Midrand, South Africa, President Mahama said it was an exciting time to be an African.
“Now is the time for the Pan-African Parliament to make its own transition, from that of a deliberative body to that of a legislative one.
“Now is the time for the Pan-African Parliament to solidify the energy of solidarity and hope that is sweeping across the continent.”
The President said he had been an advocate of the House being granted full legislative powers “because the challenges facing our nations are increasingly becoming ones that have no regard for national boundaries; challenges such as effectively enforcing laws to end the trafficking of drugs and the trafficking of human beings; addressing the impact of climate change, deforestation, desertification, and land degradation”.
The President said Africa would be better able to prevent, regulate, and even reverse the continent’s challenges if they were handled by one unified body as opposed to many individual countries, some with limited reach or resources.
“There are a number of other benefits to this House having full legislative powers, one of which is the complete erasure of the final vestiges of colonisation, the most pervasive of which are the artificial boundaries that still threaten to keep us divided,” he said.
President Mahama said member countries must work towards achieving a system of governance in which no African, for the purpose of short-term passage, was considered a foreigner in another African country.
“We must enact laws that allow people, goods and services to move freely across the continent so as to establish and integrate free trade areas. This can only be of benefit to individual nations and to the continent as a whole,” he said
The President said the Pan-African Parliament, having full legislative powers, would turn the vision Africa's founding fathers had nearly 50 years ago, when they established the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on May 25, 1963.
“There is strength in unity. Our founding fathers recognised this simple fact. Long before there was a European Union (EU), there was the Organisation of African Unity,” he said.
Speaking on solidarity, President Mahama recalled that in 1963 when the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was established, one of its primary functions was to serve as a home for the people of Africa.
“A home that was not beholden to the artificial boundaries that had kept us divided for so long; boundaries that had kept us from fully recognising that we are one family, brothers and sisters, bound together by a shared destiny. This was a visionary undertaking: a home built not with brick and mortar, but with the desire for Pan-African progress,” he said.
President Mahama said it was especially visionary at that time in African history because after generations of domination, colonies were finally becoming independent and struggling to find answers to the various questions and problems of leadership and the development that came with liberation.
He said those post-colonial years, the lost decades, as they had been called, were full of turbulence and instability, and indicated that the forward motion of the continent and its fledgling democracies were often undermined by dictatorships, coups and civil wars.
President Mahama said despite those difficult times, the Organisation of African Unity remained.
“Its presence, however minimal or seemingly inconsequential in the day-to-day lives of African people, was in itself another promise of independence that was yet to be fulfilled,” he said.
The President said after slavery, colonisation, civil wars, drought and hunger, the Africans had watched as nations, one after the other, had transitioned from war to peace, from dictatorship to democracy, from poverty to economic stability.
He said the world had watched as Africa transitioned from a continent to be pitied, patronised and negatively portrayed, into a continent whose nations now commanded attention and respect on the international stage.
Source: Daily Graphic
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