DEMOCRACY OF YESTERYEAR'S IN GHANA
In Ghana, a combination of both domestic political resistance by civic groups and organizations to authoritarian rule, and calls for the promotion of good political governance by external bilateral and multilateral agencies and donors, set the stage for the transition to democratic rule. Sandbrook (2000) notes that in January 1991, the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) government led by Jerry John Rawlings who had taken over the reins of power after a military coup on 31 December 1981, presented a transition timetable and in May 1991 confirmed that Ghana would return to a multiparty system. After a referendum in April 1992 approved a constitution, the ban on political activity was lifted. Opposition political parties that had been unbanned then rushed to establish them for an election that was scheduled to take place six months later. It is against this backdrop that the presidential election was held on 3 November 1992. The PNDC, which had metamorphosed into the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and led by Jerry John Rawlings, was declared winner of the presidential elections with 58.4 per cent of the votes, followed by Professor Albert Adu Boahen of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) with 30.29 per cent while other contestants polled less than 11 per cent of the vote.
The main opposition
party NPP boycotted the parliamentary elections held on 28 December 1992 on
grounds that the presidential elections had been rigged by the NDC with the
help of the PNDC. Thus, when the NDC government was inaugurated in January
1993, it was a parliament dominated by the NDC MPs, who basically rubber
stamped everything that the executive brought before it. In the absence of an
opposition party, the parliament was seen as very ineffective. With the NDC holding
189 out of the 200 seats, and the remaining 11 seats held by smaller political
parties aligned with the NDC, it was obvious that Ghana was only a democracy in
name, and that some of the authoritarian tendencies that characterized the PNDC
era were still in force. For example, as Fobih points out, in 1993, the NDC
government proposed a bill that required local and foreign non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) in Ghana to register with the National Council on
Non-Governmental Organizations. This body was also empowered to deregister any
organization at its own discretion. However, as a result of the vehement
protest from the CSOs that the law infringed on the freedom of association, the
bill was later aborted (Fobih, 2008).
While there was
political space for the opposition to operate, they basically did so from
outside the parliament. They could not influence decision-making at the
official levels of power, thereby limiting their ability to hold the NDC
government in check. When elections were held again in 1996, with nearly 80 per
cent of the 9.27 million registered voters actually casting ballots, J.J.
Rawlings won 57.4 per cent of the votes, while his main challenger and new NPP
Presidential candidate, John Agyekum Kufuor polled 39.6 per cent. The NDC
captured 134 of the 200 parliamentary seats, while the NPP won 60 seats, the
People’s Convention Party (PCP) won five seats and the People’s National
Convention (PNC) captured one seat. However, the 2000 elections marked an
unprecedented milestone in Ghana’s political history when the incumbent NDC
government, the party of J.J. Rawlings, was defeated and power was peacefully
transferred to John Kufuor and the NPP (Tettey et al. 2003).
As Gyimah Boadi points
out, the first round of the presidential elections on 7 December 2000 produced
a remarkably close contest between John Agyekum Kufour of the opposition NPP
and John Evans Atta Mills of Rawlings’ NDC. Kufour won 48 per cent of the vote
to Mills’ 45 per cent, but with no candidate winning a majority, a runoff was
scheduled for 28 December. Kufour then went on to win the runoff by a more
comfortable margin, with 56.9 per cent of the vote. Moreover, the NPP captured
100 of the parliament’s 200 seats; the NDC total fell from 133 in the previous
parliament to 92, while independent and minor parties that had backed the NPP
candidate in the runoff gained the remaining eight seats (Gyimah-Boadi, 2001).
Notwithstanding the NPP’s majority, the existence of the NDC as the main
opposition party ensured a much more effective parliament since the NDC members
served as a check on the activities of the governing NPP.
Similar developments occurred in the December
2004 election. With an overall voter turnout at 85.12 per cent, J.A. Kufuor was
re-elected as President with 52.45 per cent of the votes, while Professor Atta
Mills of the NDC received 44.64 per cent. In addition, the parliamentary seats
that had been increased from 200 to 230 by the EC just before the elections saw
the ruling NPP retain its majority with 128 parliamentary seats, while the NDC
won 94 seats.
During general elections
and campaign periods, the media’s ability to be an objective and disinterested
party becomes an issue and challenge. This was evident in the 2008 elections
where certain sections of the media created confusion by calling results for
particular candidates based on projected as opposed to actual figures from the
EC. In addition, the budget on which most of the private print media operate is
believed to be rather meager and tight. Apart from the state-owned newspapers
and a handful of the private press, which carry significant amounts of
advertisements, the remaining newspapers survive almost entirely on
subscription and news stand sales, with very limited circulation figures. In
effect, the inability to independently generate adequate revenue for their
businesses makes the private press in general susceptible to manipulation by
political patrons. With the average Ghanaian earning roughly a dollar a day, it
is quite difficult to imagine citizens spending their money to buy a newspaper
or calling a radio or TV station to participate in the national political
dialogue (Smith & Temin, 2001: 166). In other words, economic survival is
of the utmost importance to many people rather than participation in the
political space provided as a result of the democratic process.
Civil Society Organization
experience has generated mixed reactions from the government of the day. Although
the relationship between the government and CSOs in the policy process has
improved in the last decade, there is limited knowledge of the ability of CSOs
to effectively utilize the institutional spaces available to them. Currently,
CSOs participation in the policy process is mostly determined by government on
a less than formal basis as the institutional framework that provides well laid
down rules of interaction and engagement between CSOs and government in the
policy process is missing.
Not all civil societies
are progressive and necessarily interested in democratic process. Some are
willing to be co-opted into the value oligarchy, while remaining silent on
questions of democracy. Others occupy the little political space created by the
state thereby becoming obstacles to democratization. In fact, some CSOs in
Ghana have in the past played a rather destabilizing role in the democratic
process in Ghana. For example, for political and financial gains, some local
NGOs such as the 31 December Women’s Movement (DWM) and the Ghana Private
Transport Union (GPRTU) were, according to Fobih (2008: 72), used by or aligned
with the authoritarian PNDC regime to suppress popular demands for democracy.
During the NDC period
(1993–2000), it was believed that the government maintained a rather tight
control of some CSOs and manipulated some of them for their ideological
purposes. In addition, many of the local CSOs currently lack funding and are
more dependent on external support to boost their resource base, reflecting a
pattern of resource deficiency of civic organizations in Ghana. Moreover, the
lack of adequate funding partly accounts for low staffing and poor conditions
of work experienced by CSOs. The staffs of many CSOs are therefore
over-burdened with responsibilities, which in turn affects their functioning
and Performance.
Such a situation has not
been helped by the fact that financial information relating to CSOs donations
and investments is rarely made public and is only shared with senior management
within the organizations themselves. The lack of transparency and unhealthy
competition reinforces the impression that CSOs in Ghana are not really
independent advocates over important issues, but rather act as agents of some
elites and political organizations in the country.
Besides the constraints
and challenges faced by the media and CSOs, another area that has received
critical attention and concern throughout are democratic rights. Ghana has seen
an improvement in the rule of law, as well as in the area of respect for the
civil and political rights of citizens, leading to a reduction in the unlawful
arrests and detention of citizens by members of the military. The improvements
can be traced in part to the activities of the many human rights groups
established in the country since the transition to democratic rule began in
Ghana. Despite these, instances of vigilante justice, police corruption, police
infringement on peoples’ privacy rights, and of harsh and life-threatening
prison conditions are quite rife in the country (Fobih, 2008).
Indeed, the 2008 Report
on the State of Human Rights in Ghana presented by CHRAJ in December 2008 noted
that communal violence, police brutality, mob justice, child sexual
exploitation and victimization of suspected ‘witches’ were some of the negative
indicators affecting the country’s effort to promote respect for human rights,
a crucial element of any democratic society.
Furthermore, as noted in
the theoretical discussion above, one important aspect of democratic
consolidation relates to the extent to which institutions such as the judiciary
are seen as trustworthy and independent in the discharge of their duties and
responsibilities. This is, however, one area where Ghana seems to be lagging.
For example, in December 2004, the independent Berlin-based Transparency
International reported that not only did the performance of key institutions in
Ghana such as the judiciary leave much to be desired, but that, beyond delays
in the administration of justice, there were instances of corruption in their
operations. Nor is it only the judicial system’s reputation that is in
question: allegations of corruption in the public services and among some
politicians affiliated with the NPP, in charge of government between 2001 and
2008, were not adequately addressed.
It is this state of
affairs that led to Ghana being ranked 69 out of 180 countries surveyed in
Transparency International’s 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index, and which
undermined the NPP government’s claim to be dealing with the problem of
corruption (Transparency International, 2007). Moreover, the NPP government was
seen as very slow to act on these issues. There was a perception that the
judiciary under the NPP was easily influenced by prominent individuals in
society. There was also a suggestion of the executive branch of government
manipulating and interfering with the judiciary’s work, exercising increasing
influence and dominance over the other organs of constitutional governance.
More significantly, the
NDC accused the NPP government of the selective application of justice. The NDC
charged that the NPP government used the country’s judicial and legal
structures to engage in a political vendetta and ‘witch-hunt’ because it only
targeted members of the opposition in its corruption investigations. For the
NDC, politics had become a zero-sum game with opposition members and those
perceived as government opponents suffering from judiciary persecution, while
perceived malfeasance by government supporters is generally ignored.
For example, in December
of 2007, the NDC MP for Keta constituency, Mr Dan Abodakpi, who happened to be
a former Minister for Trade and Industry under the Rawlings regime, was
convicted by an Accra High Court of defrauding and causing financial loss to
the state in the amount of $400,000.00. The NDC contended that this conviction
was part of the judiciary’s bias against leading NDC figures that was exhibited
under the NPP administration. In protest, the NDC boycotted parliamentary
proceedings for three weeks (Ghana Centre for Democratic Development, 2007).
Similarly, Tsatsu Tsikata, former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National
Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and a leading member of the NDC, was convicted by
an Accra Circuit Tribunal in June 2008 for causing financial loss to the state
and sentenced to five years in prison.
While the NPP government
justified such criminal convictions as part of its broad focus and mandate to
deal with corruption as well as promoting good governance and accountability,
critics charged that the judiciary was manipulated by the NPP government.
Although President John Kuffuor on 6 January 2009, his last day in office,
granted what the government described as ‘free, absolute and unconditional
pardon’ to Tsatsu Tsikata, Dan Abodakpi and other former NDC officials
convicted of willfully causing financial loss to the state, as well as commuted
the sentences of over 500 other prisoners of Various categories.
The NPP administration
was nonetheless seen as protecting its functionaries and prosecuting opponents
during its term in office. These raised serious questions about the application
of the law in Ghana, the impartiality of the country’s judicial system and its
processes, the objectivity and integrity of the government’s zero tolerance on
corruption policy and about the integrity of the country’s constitutional
arrangements. Indeed, there is some credibility to this claim by the NDC since
instances of blatant corruption by government officials as well as by NPP
functionaries were rarely targeted, charged and prosecuted and they were seldom
convicted of corruption and economic malfeasance (Ghana Centre for Democratic
Development, 2007).
The judiciary is not the
only institution to come under political criticism. Despite its independence,
impartiality and laudable efforts in the conduct of elections, the EC has had
to grapple with a number of challenges. First, the president’s power of
appointment to the EC has been a source of controversy along partisan lines
(Afrimap et al. , 2007). Moreover, there is increasing concern that the EC does
not adequately facilitate the electoral process by ensuring all materials
needed for elections are provided to enable every eligible voter.
For example, in the
presidential runoff held on 28 December 2008, voters in the Tain constituency
of the Brong Ahafo Region was unable to participate in the elections due to
technical and logistical problems encountered by the EC in the distribution of
ballot papers. While the electorate had their elections conducted by the EC
five days later, this contributed to the tension and confusion that characterized
the presidential runoff of 2008. Similarly,
CODEO expressed dissatisfaction with the irregularities that marred the 2008 voters’
registration exercise mounted by the EC. It was particularly worried about what
it considered undue interferences of political party agents in the exercise and
their failure to follow laid down procedures, particularly in raising
challenges against registrants. There was also the concern expressed by CSOs
regarding the high levels of illegal voter registration in the form of
under-aged, alien and double registration. Such concerns and pressure from CSOs
led the EC to announce in November 2008 that it had deleted from the voter
register list a total of 349,000 names, made up of people who were foreigners,
dead or minors.
Finally, pre- election
environments in Ghana have generally been characterized by ill-feeling, deep
mistrust and intense acrimony between the ruling party and the opposition
(Gyimah-Boadi, 2001). The campaign messages that were used by both the ruling
party and the main opposition party in the 2008 elections were largely not
issues-based, but rather characterized by personal attacks. At a courtesy call
in November 2008 by former President J.J. Rawlings on the Asantehene, one of
the most prominent traditional rulers in Ghana, the Asantehene pointed out
that, regrettably, the country’s political system during elections is muddied
with lies, dirty political machinations, threats and intimidation emanating
from both the government and opposition parties. Reports of ruling party agents
and organs of the state intimidating the opposition were often rife, and there
is a pervading sense that violence might erupt (Gyimah- Boadi, 2001).
For
example, the voter registration process in 2008 was in certain instances marred
by violence and irregularities. It was reported in the media that in the
Northern Region of Ghana, supporters of the NPP and the NDC vandalized
registration centers on 2 August 2008. In a similar vein, during the 2008
election period, at various campaign stops for the NDC, J.J. Rawlings,
according to his critics, senselessly maligned the NPP government by accusing
them of being behind recent high profile and unsolved murders, glorifying
corruption and undermining the moral fabric of the nation, also calling for
their removal from office.
Conversely, the high
echelons of NPP, including its National Chairman, accused J.J. Rawlings of
collecting kickbacks from prominent foreign companies. The NPP also contended
that the John Evans Atta Mills-led NDC lacked the capacity and aptitude to
prosecute sound economic policies that could help move the development agenda
of Ghana forward. These accusations and counter-accusations are not helped by
the attitude of the political elite, who see politics as a means to pursue
private ends and therefore spend lavishly during elections to maintain their
seats.
All these factors
combine to create an unprecedented state of public anxiety, as many people fear
that the transition would be disrupted and elections might degenerate into
civil conflict (Gyimah-Boadi, 2001), and ultimately threaten the essential
foundations of the democratic process, such as dialogue, tolerance,
co-operation, consensus-building, compromise and goodwill.
Ghana is among the
African countries that have made great efforts to consolidate democracy for the
welfare of her people. Despite the challenges, the country has tried to
entrench and maintain independent key democratic institution such as judiciary,
media, civil society, electoral
commission, multiparty
system of politics and human rights watch institutions. In any democratic
state, these institutions are considered as the key pillars of democracy and
without these, a country cannot be perceived as democratic. In regard to this
one can therefore assert that there are democratic practices in Ghana and thus,
the country has established a democratic system of government.
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