|
New Page 14
The beauty of democracy
KOFI AKOSAH-SARPONG
There is
nothing Ghanaians and the growing democratic institutions like more than
extolling the virtues of Ghana’s growing democracy. A month ago during the
Kumasi convention of ruling National Patriotic Party (NPP), President John
Kuffour enthusiastically spoke of how in the almost four years of NPP rule
Ghanaians have enjoyed freedom and choices and the rule of law and increasingly
moving away from the culture of fear and silence that have dominated the almost
20 years of the Flt. Lt. Jerry Rawlings’ military and civilian regimes. In a
way, as some Ghanaians say, "Freedom is on the march, not limping." As part of
safe-guarding their marching democracy from political accidents, in a region
with high history of instabilities, superstitious Ghanaians both at home and in
the diaspora with nostalgia of long-running brutal military juntas, two weeks
into the impending general elections, have mounted prayers and fasting, the most
prominent being one from a Rev. Dr. Rosa Mills, of London, U.K’s Zion Banner
Church, entitled "A Novena Prayer For Ghana National Elections," asking
Ghanaians to recite the prayer between November to December 7 for safe general
elections. But some Ghanaians see this not only as a sign of nervousness but
also immaturity and lack of trust among themselves.
Nervousness about the general elections is
demonstrated by Rawlings letter to diplomats and institutions about the apparent
electoral wrongs of Ghana’s Election Commission, which he thinks are aimed at
helping the NPP in winning the December 7 general elections, a situation he
thinks could send Ghana to similar path of war-ravaged Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire
and Sierra Leone. Ghanaians are coming to the conclusion that multiparty
democratic elections is not only exhausting but intellectually demanding,
especially a country and a region with shallow democratic roots, needing all the
tolerance and mental energy one can surmount in the face of Ghana/West Africa’s
culture and history of failed democracies, weak institutions, one-party
autocratic and no-party military regimes, tribalism, states collapse,
intolerance, wild politics, poverty, coup scare, and prophets and other
spiritualists blinding the electorate from thinking about issues coherently.
In a measure that shows the Ghanaian/West
African culture of deep prophetic predictions dancing confusingly with modern
scientific opinion polls each of the main political parties, the NPP and the
National Democratic Congress (NDC), pollsters claim their party is leading in
the swelling opinion polls. The credibility of most of the myriad of polls is in
doubt. In the 2000 general elections opinion polls commissioned by the United
Nations Development Programme, 52 per cent of 5,000 interviewed preferred
candidate Kuffour to then Vice President Atta Mills who got 31 per cent. The
contradictory nature of most of the current polls reflects the domination of the
voter population by the youth who are mostly floaters with no traditionally
emotional ties to the core political traditions of Danquah-Busia and Nkrumaist.
As movements of the democratic process
heat up the cultural challenges of development are increasingly coming into the
forefront. Ghanaians now scrutinize their culture and their development openly
unlike the cries of ethnocentrism of yesteryears especially during the fierce
nationalist era of first president Kwame Nkrumah. From the banning of the "trokosy"
system, a process where teenage girls are enslaved into shrines for sins
committed by their parents in the Volta Region, to ways in which people, mainly
women, alleged to be witches are inhumanly treated to how juju-marabou mediums
and prophets hold sway over political elites, the democratic process has given
Ghanaians the freedom to discuss their development process holistically.
With less than one week to go, Ghanaians’
enthusiasm for democracy is not matched by desire to help women participate
fully. This is despite various government policies to do so. Almost 50 years
after independence from colonial rule, which reinforced the African culture of
patriarchy that relegates women to the sidelines of national political process,
despite being the main carriers of socio-economic burden, women participation in
politics is not growing. The awareness of this in itself is good for the
democratic process. "The low participation and representation of women in
national politics is due to the country’s political system which is mainly
structured around inequalities in gender relations," Nana Oye Lithur, the Co-ordinator
of the Africa Office of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, has told a
"Gender economic and political power" conference in Accra, blaming the various
political parties for carrying on the "status quo" which had kept women
relegated to the background in the nation’s body-politic." Frustrated by the
baby democracy not opening up enough to them some women such as Madam Agnes
Donkor, Convention People’s Party (CPP) parliamentary candidate for the Kwabre
East Constituency, have been calling on other women to "resolve to cast their
votes for female parliamentary candidates in the upcoming Election 2004 to help
to augment their numbers in parliament."
With long years of military and autocratic
rule that suppressed their innate democratic values grounded in patriarchic
culture, some politicians and their supporters, intoxicated from their new found
democratic freedom, have gone off course in using insults and threats, a sign of
West African Oedipus complex of hunger for civil war, coup, instabilities,
violence and hot headedness. But as democratic institutions grow, the Ghanaian
polity is increasingly being educated to be civil in their electioneering
campaigns. "Election is not war of empty words - NCCE Chairman," says a Ghana
News Agency (GNA) front page. Another reads, "CDD organises forum for
candidates." A forum organized by the Centre for Democratic Development - Ghana
(CDD), with support from the Open Society Initiative of West Africa (OSIWA) and
the United States Agency for International Development - Ghana (USAID) for
aspiring parliamentary candidates in their various constituencies in Brong Ahafo
Region enjoined the candidates to focus their campaign activities on issues
concerning the needs of people in the constituencies instead of threats and
insults.
With the youth dominating the Ghanaian
voting population, the old traditional Danquah-Busia of capitalists and the old
traditional Nkrumaists of social democrats core voters are increasingly
shrinking, making floating voters much more higher. This means, all things being
equal, issues and credible candidates should drive the last leg of the campaigns
since most of the voters are not conservatives of any party leaning. For now
democracy is on the match in Ghana, and the political parties, democratic
institutions, diasporan Ghanaians and some international institutions are
leading the charge.
•Akosah-Sarpong wrote from Accra, Ghana
|
