Accra, May 3, GNA - Acclaimed African politicians on Friday began a two-day forum in Accra on the theme: "Fifty Years of Sub-Saharan African Independence and the Role of Political Parties; Promises, Decline and Resurgence."

The forum seeks to review the past 50 years and help shape up and spell out the role of political parties for the next 50 years with particular emphasis on African renaissance encompassing the totality of Africa's life - political, economic, social, cultural, legal and intellectual.

Fifty-five political parties from 14 African countries are attending the forum, being organised by Ghana Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD).

Dr Charles Mensa, IEA President, said the link between the political parties of West, Eastern and Southern Africa was to give political think-tanks, economists, academia and other leading experts a platform to look at African political parties and their roles in multiparty democracy from a continental perspective.

He described political parties as "the core intermediary institutions in representative democracies which aggregate the demands of society, translate these demands into policy options and mediate these policy options between society and the state".

Dr Mensa urged African politicians to adopt common platform to deliberate and interact across party lineages, and condemned the current practices where most political parties seldom talked to each other. "If we want stable democratic systems of governance, then we must know what is happening in our various political parties, not only within our countries, but on the continent.

"That way, we can identify the weaknesses of the political parties learn from each other's experiences and see how those experiences will help us address those weaknesses."

Dr Mensa called on African leaders to chart a new way forward, with the role of political parties clearly defined with particular attention to other dimensions of democracy - inter-election period, accommodating conflicts of interest peacefully and reconciling past differences.