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Ghana - Political Parties

Ghana has two large political parties, two small parties, and a handful of tiny mom-and-pop operations that exist mainly on paper. Ghana has essentially a two-party system: the business-oriented NPP of President John Kufuor, and former President Jerry Rawlings' semi-populist NDC. Nkrumaist leftists and nativist non-entities play on the margins of this two-party political scene.

Every political party in Ghana is required by the 1992 constitution to demonstrate "national character." Each must have branches in all 10 regions (and two-thirds of each region's districts). National officers must be drawn from every region. Membership or symbols based on "ethnic, regional, religious or other sectional connotation" are forbidden. Parties must "satisfy" the Electoral Commission (EC) that they meet these requirements.

By implication, the EC's constitutional authority to register parties also encompasses the power to de-register parties who fail the "national character" test. The EC would spare itself the trouble of attempting to communicate with organizations that have barely a stamp and envelope to rub together.

Fresh paint and party symbols often adorned structures dedicated to petty commerce: tinroof storefronts, small bakeries, seamstresses' streetside counters. Anything that could remotely be called an office was claimed to be so, with EC officials sometimes standing in cobweb-strewn, broken-roofed shacks while party officers baldly proclaimed continual use by streams of party faithful.

Ghana is almost unique in Africa in that over sixteen years of democratic civilian rule, both major political parties have won elections and assumed power, and both parties have lost elections and peacefully handed over power. Opposition parties realize that they can have a turn at the wheel and if they do poorly in their constituents' eyes, they too will be voted out of office.

There is no significant state funding of political parties or candidates in Ghana other than the provision of a limited number of vehicles to political parties. There is also no limit on the amount of money each party and candidate can spend on the election campaign. All presidential candidates are entitled to fair treatment and equal time and space in the state-owned media.

Ghana's December, 2008 election saw the country's second peaceful transfer of power between political parties since the nation's return to constitutional democracy in 1992. Ghana's main political parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), along with several minor parties, staged a hard fought campaign. Professor John Evans Atta Mills, a former vice-president (and Fulbright Scholar) was elected President in a narrow run-off election. His party, the National Democratic Congress, gained enough seats in Parliament to be, with minor party support, the governing party.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) saw the 2008 election as a make-or-break watershed event. Failure to gain power at this juncture could prove to be the death knell of the party, inducing a significant portion of its supporters to defect to other parties, including the emerging Convention Peoples Party (CPP), which was perceived to be gaining considerable ground under the canny campaign of its flag-bearer, Paa Kwesi Nduom. The NDC further asserted that the Kufuor government has used "fast-track" courts and legislation covering "willful cause of loss to the state" selectively against its political opponents.

Following the December 2008 election the NDC experienced two separate, but related, sets of internal conflict. The first concerns party-administration relations. After years in opposition, the NDC faithful looked forward to jobs, access to power, and (in some cases) retribution against the NPP for alleged abuses of power. Sections of the party, encouraged by comments by former President Rawlings, quickly concluded that President Mills was moving too slowly on his campaign promises of change, and that party concerns--especially in the appointments process-- were not being addressed.

The NDC Executive Committee met 31 March 2009, in a meeting attended by the current and former Presidents, the Vice President, and the party leadership. The meeting was cordial, and not an angry debate as reported in the media. The party leadership felt marginalized by Mills and his close advisors, and "90 percent of the party leadership is behind Rawlings, even if not publicly."

Rawlings had been critical of the selection process for the seventy-plus minister and deputy minister appointments, believing that they do not fully represent all sections of the party, including some of those who remained the most faithful during the years in opposition. That said,the party was never significant when Rawlings was in power, and many view its emergence as a cynical attempt to gain influence by Rawlings and others. Days prior to the meeting, Rawlings had made reference to "characters" who had hijacked the party and who had an undue influence in the appointments process.

The NDC's second internal struggle was over succession. There are frequent media reports -- although less evidence -- that President Mills was in poor health. Some of the health rumors appeared to come from within the NDC, where several factions would not be disappointed to see an open spot at the top of the 2012 ticket.

The Vice-President, John Mahama, was a potential candidate mentioned in succession talk. A northerner, popular with many in the party, he was a strong campaigner in the 2008 election. His competition included Betty Mould-Iddrissu, the current Attorney-General. Mould-Iddrissu worked for the Commonwealth in London, and is an experienced attorney. She was the preferred 2008 vice-presidential choice of former First Lady, Nana Rawlings, and Mills' selection of Mahama was seen as a statement of independence from the Rawlings. The Director-General of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization, Ekwon Spio-Gabrah, was also believed to be interested. Spio-Gabrah finished second to Mills in the party's primary. Finally, Kwesi Ahwoi was believed to be positioning himself.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) had a visceral fear and hatred of the NDC, stemming from days when that party's predecessor jailed and exiled its founding fathers. The party may also be troubled by the prospect of an NDC government conducting investigations into NPP corruption during the Kufuor administration.

The NPP would be reviewing its constitution over the next several months. Some predicted that the selection process for determining candidates for Parliament would be widened to include all registered party members in good standing in the primary. The system used in 2008, where a few polling agents in each constituency made the decision, was open to abuse. Several constituency selections led to dissatisfaction at the local level. Four independents were elected to parliament in 2008, all of whom were former NPP members angry at not getting the nomination. In other cases, such as the conflict prone northern constituency of Yendi, independent-NPP candidates split the vote with the NPP candidate, allowing the NDC to win the seat.

The Convention People's Party (CPP) was founded in 1949 by former President Kwame Nkrumah and still espouses a distinctly Nkrumahesque view of the world. The CPP sees itself as a mass party representing farmers, fishermen, and the villages. It endorses a strong role for the state and a vision of Pan-African empowerment The CPP won less than 2 percent of the vote in the 2000 elections and has only one seat in parliament (the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament). In the first half of 2004, four prominent CPP leaders ("the Gang of Four") urged voters to vote for them on a CPP ticket but vote for the NPP's presidential candidate.

The CPP faced challenges introducing itself to a new generation of Ghanaians for whom the CPP and country's first leader, Kwame Nkrumah is only a figure in history. The party was constrained by its lack of finances, which gave the relatively few contributors too much influence over the selection of candidates. Party leader Paa Kwesi Ndoum lacked broad acceptance, even within the party. In areas where the CPP was competitive in 2008, particularly the Western Region, parliamentary candidates received more votes than Ndoum. The solution for the CPP was to build up its seats in parliament, possible, if the NDC falters in government. The party's only MP in 2009, Samia Nkrumah, daughter of the first president, was not yet ready to lead the party. She does not speak a Ghanaian language and will need more time in parliament to gain experience.

The People's National Convention (PNC) is rooted in the northern half of Ghana. The perennial fourth party saw its 2008 presidential vote drop by half (to about 80,000 votes), along with dropping from four to two seats in parliament. The two seats, however, were exactly the number needed by the NDC to secure a minimum majority in parliament, and the PNC bargained hard, or at least thought it did, for a promise of its support. The NDC had promised two ministries, three deputy ministries, three ambassadorships and assorted other appointments, plus a street renamed for Hilla Limann, the PNC leader briefly Ghana's elected president between the Rawlings' military coups. The government had delivered on one ministership, a ceremonial position without portfolio in the Office of the President,and one seat on the advisory Council of State. Despite the disappointment,

The party's four-time flag bearer, Dr. Edward Mahama, was pulling back from his participation in the party. Party unity was an issue, because the leadership did not endorse a candidate in the run-off election, and PNC members were divided as a result.

Both the CPP and the PNC share similar both ideological positions and Nkrumahist roots. Both embrace a social democratic agenda, with populist electoral messages. The PNC's strength is in the far north of Ghana, where it holds four parliamentary seats, while the CPP's strength is in the Central and Western Regions, where it won three seats in 2004.

Despite their small-to-infinitismal size, the also-rans do figure in Ghanaian politics. Local media grant extensive coverage to their Lilliputian doings. Four of the small parties have tried for some time, unsuccessfully, to merge and form a unified "Nkrumaist" alternative on the left of the political spectrum (all told, these parties polled 6% of the vote in the 2000 presidential election). Petty egotism, each party holding fiercely to its own name and leaders, proved the merger's undoing -- with the convoluted ups and downs dutifully documented in print and on the airwaves. Any political event of any consequence, the yearly opening of Parliament, ministerial press briefings, lecture series by one of Accra's prominent NGOs or think-tanks, generally includes a sprinkling of small party leaders, who bask in the limelight and repeat their standard stump speeches, to the attentive if sometimes amused concern of the press and hosts.

Two new political parties emerged in Ghana in August 2006, bringing the total number of parties in Ghana to eleven. The United Renaissance Party (URP), led by Kofi Wayo, is an NPP spin-off. The Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), formed by Obed Asamoah, is composed of disaffected former supporters of the main opposition NDC party.

The Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), succeeded in recruiting "founders" from each of Ghana's 138 districts and has opened offices in at least two-thirds of them. Its chairman is Obed Asamoah, a foreign minister under former President Rawlings, a former university lecturer, and a former Chairman of the main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Asamoah said the DFP would be a center-left "social democratic" party, endorsing more state intervention in the economy. He cautioned that this did not mean more state ownership, but rather greater GOG assistance to key industries, such as agriculture and mining.

The United Renaissance Party (URP) became the eleventh recognized political party in Ghana. The URP's chair is Kofi Wayo, a gadfly businessman and former NPP candidate for parliament. Opposed to politicians who enter government service merely to amass wealth, the party has launched a populist appeal, saying it would establish "credit schemes" for workers to provide them with economic security and a higher standard of living. In media interviews, Wayo proclaimed that the Ghanaian economy should benefit Ghanaians, not merely satisfy the World Bank and IMF.