Ghana - 2008 Election
Ghana held presidential and legislative elections on December 7, 2008. The 2008 election was the most acrimonious and bitterly contested in the nation's history. The 2008 contest was the first in which no incumbent president or vice president is running, and the stakes were particularly high for both major parties. Ghana's political campaign became increasingly strident, with the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) party accusing the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) of unbridled corruption, involvement in narcotics trafficking, and the development of a sophisticated strategy to steal the election. The NPP for its part planted seeds of distrust among the electorate, saying openly that Ghana's democracy was in danger as long as the "revolutionary wing of the NDC" (Read: Jerry Rawlings) continued to have significant influence in the party. The ruling party has also expressed its concern that the NDC will not accept the outcome of the election, inferring that the opposition was already laying the groundwork to dispute the election results so that it can resort to violence in the face of an election loss.
Despite party platforms that tend to blur into one another, Ghanaians were presented with a clear choice in terms of the personalities of the major party candidates. The NPP's Akufo-Addo can best be described as a patrician's patrician, a member not only of the dominant Akans, but also an Akyem, an ethnic group that tends to consider itself a rung above the bluest of bluebloods. He is the scion of a political family of considerable renown, and his father was Chief Justice of the Ghana Supreme Court and President of Ghana from 1970-72.
Akufo-Addo earned degrees in economics and law in England and Ghana, and began practicing law in Accra in 1979. He became active in human rights and political causes during the Rawlings years, and joined the NPP in 1992. He was the principal author of "The Stolen Verdict," a 1993 NPP political tract that brought about numerous election reforms. Elected to Parliament in 1996, he became an outspoken critic of the Rawlings government.
John Evans Atta-Mills, the opposition NDC candidate, obtained degrees in economics and law in England. He then lectured at the University of Ghana for 25 years, and is always referred to as "Prof." Atta-Mills became Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service in 1988, and used that unlikely springboard to enter politics and serve as Jerry Rawlings vice president from 1996 to 2000. Atta-Mills was making his third consecutive run for the presidency--not usually a recipe for success. Atta-Mills had won the nomination from a reluctant but destitute party whose only choice was to field a candidate with instant name and face recognition.
Although he is not an exciting campaigner, Atta-Mills still managed to draw large crowds of enthusiastic supporters, even during his campaign swing through the NPP's stronghold Ashanti Region. Mills campaigns on a populist platform of "prosperity for all," with a strong emphasis on the "all." He hammered away at what he characterizes as Ghana's high level of unemployment, corruption, declining living standards for the masses, and the gap between the urban haves and the rural have-nots. Strapped for cash, Atta-Mills opted for a retail campaign strategy that puts him in a car and plies him from town to town in regions with large numbers of swing voters.
Eight candidates contested the election but none of the candidates achieved over 50% of the vote. A runoff was held between NPP candidate Nana Akufo-Addo and NDC candidate John Atta Mills on December 28, 2008. After voting was conducted in the last voting district on January 2, John Atta Mills emerged as the winner with a margin of just over 40,000 votes. The new administration was sworn into office on January 7, 2009. The next election is scheduled to take place in 2012, with John Atta Mills running for his second term and Nana Akufo-Addo running as the primary opposition for the NPP.
State-owned media, represented in print by the Daily Graphic and the Ghanaian Times, and on-air by the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, did an outstanding job of ensuring that each party received equal daily coverage. When measured against the number of votes received by the smaller parties (between 1.4% and .08% for six of the eight parties) this self-discipline in providing coverage to the smaller parties was remarkable. Some concern exists about the number of paid advertisements and program-length infomercials the ruling party was able to air on state television prior to the elections; however, the news coverage was equitable.
Although independent, party-backed newspapers continue to run sensational and sometimes inflammatory headlines, their circulation was limited and their credibility recognized as negligible on this issue. Although government-owned television is required to devote equal time to all candidates, the most universal complaint with regard to coverage is one of fairness. Images of rallies, for example, do not always accurately reflect the actual number of supporters present.
The government of John Atta Mills appeared to enjoy broad support among the Ghanaian population as it pursued the domestic political agenda entitled “Better Ghana.” The ruling NDC is a social democratic party that seeks to harness the power of the free market to protect worker rights and reduce poverty, while supporting the rule of law and basic human rights. The government inherited a fiscal crisis when it took office; in addition to focusing on the economy, President Mills pursued an anti-corruption agenda and has announced plans to review the 1993 constitution and support decentralization. President Mills expressed a willingness to confront Ghana's problem with narcotics trafficking, most recently with a speech at the 66th session of the U.N. General Assembly. As part of its anti-corruption efforts the Mills government required senior government officials to comply with the assets declaration law, changed the regulation to require public disclosure of assets, pledged greater transparency in government procurement, expanded the Serious Fraud Office into the Economic and Organised Crime Office, and fired a minister for misusing public funds.
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