YOUR EXCELLENCIES

COLLEAGUE MEMBERS

THE MEDIA

DISTINGUISHED LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

Greetings from the ruling New Patriotic Party and the good people of Ghana. We are fervently putting final touches in place to climax our Golden Jubilee Celebrations dubbed GHANA @ 50. I wish to take this opportunity to invite you to Ghana for the celebrations. On behalf of the executives of the Democratic Union of Africa (DUA) and on my own behalf I wish to welcome you all to this special meeting here in Tanzania. Its very heart warming to be together.

As you may recall in August last year when DUA met in Accra, Ghana, we discussed ways of building institutional capacities for our political parties. We also resolved that good governance and the rule of law will lead to peaceful accelerated development in Africa.

Ladies and Gentlemen I am convinced that to move Africa forward centre-­right parties must dominate Africa politics. Centre-right parties must be able to win elections in as many countries as possible on the African continent.

This is a sure way of having Democratic tenants of DUA drive political actions in our respective countries. It also provides our people with a functional ability to fight poverty, illiteracy, and deprivation.

Efforts of our governments in finding lasting solution to the numerous socio-economic problems seems not to yield the required result. Regrettably, ruling governments and opposition parties across the continent hardly finds a common market place in cooperation, communication and support to promote political stability and economic growth.

We should try to get DUA members in power to actively involve the executive arm of government to actively participate in the activities of DUA

DUA, therefore stands reassuring in providing swift paradigm shift in building and strengthening capacities of democratic political institutions, putting in place adequate structures to correct the imbalance.

Today's meeting is about developing winning campaign strategies and good party organisation. By the time we finish tomorrow we would have equipped ourselves further with fresh ideas about how best to organise our parties to win elections. In this regard Garvin Barwell and(Rt. Hon. Peter Lilley of the ConservativeParty UK will give us presentations) on strategies to win elections, elections and party organisation respectively Mr Eric Moen will give us an update on the International Democratic Union. Additionally, we shall receive reports from member countries.

Even though the past six months was full of teething challenges I am very optimistic that this August gathering will evolve the necessary strategies to .­address pertinent issues such as delay in the payment of membership dues and pledges, well functioning secretariat and our website.

We should try to get DUA members in power to actively involve the executive arm of government to actively participate in the activities of DUA.Comprehensive programmes should be drawn for the active participation of women and the youth.

There should be a conscious effort at increasing the membership of DUA since many political parties abound in Africa.

On behalf of DUA I wish to express our profound gratitude to the Conservative Party of UK for their continuous support and encouragement to the ideals of the union.

I wish you a very fruitful deliberation.

Thank You.

PETER MAC MANU

CHAIRMAN