Ghana - Party Politics
Since mid-1992 political parties have been legal after ten-year hiatus. In April 1992, a new constitution that called for an elected parliament and chief executive won overwhelming approval in a national referendum. Political parties, banned since 1982, were the mechanism by which the system was to work.
Under the Fourth Republic, major parties are National Democratic Congress, led by Jerry John Rawlings, which won presidential and parliamentary elections in 1992; New Patriotic Party, major opposition party; People's National Convention, led by former president Hilla Limann; and (new) People's Convention Party, successor to Kwame Nkrumah's original party of same name.
By election time in August 1969, the first competitive nationwide political contest since 1956, five parties had been organized. The major contenders were the Progress Party (PP), headed by Kofi A. Busia, and the National Alliance of Liberals (NAL), led by Komla A. Gbedemah. Critics associated these two leading parties with the political divisions of the early Nkrumah years. The PP found much of its support among the old opponents of Nkrumah's CPP—the educated middle class and traditionalists of Ashanti Region and the North.
This link was strengthened by the fact that Busia had headed the NLM and its successor, the UP, before fleeing the country to oppose Nkrumah from exile. Similarly, the NAL was seen as the successor of the CPP's right wing, which Gbedemah had headed until he was ousted by Nkrumah in 1961. The elections demonstrated an interesting voting pattern. For example, the PP carried all the seats among the Asante and the Brong. Overall, the PP gained 59 percent of the popular vote and 74 percent of the seats in the National Assembly. The PP's victories demonstrated some support among nearly all ethnic groups. An estimated 60 percent of the electorate voted.
In October 1970, the NAL absorbed the members of three other minor parties in the assembly to form the Justice Party (JP) under the leadership of Joseph Appiah. The JP's combined strength constituted what amounted to a southern bloc with a solid constituency among most of the Ewe and the peoples of the coastal cities.
The Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) was composed of leaders of Rawlings's second coup. With considerable evolution of personnel and objectives, continued until 1992 to be sole center of political power in Ghana. That it took the PNDC more than ten years to lift the ban imposed on political parties at the inception of PNDC rule not only demonstrated the PNDC's control over the pace and direction of political change but also confirmed the shallowness of the political soil in which the party system was rooted. Party activity had been banned under all of the military governments that had dominated nearly twenty out of the thirty-five years of Ghana's postcolonial existence.
Even during periods of civilian administration, party organization had been largely urban centered and rudimentary. It had depended far more on personal alliances and on ethnic and local ties, as well as on patron-client relationships, than on nationally institutionalized structures. Party politics had tended to generate corruption and factionalism. The party system, therefore, never had any real hold on the consciousness of the average Ghanaian, especially the rural Ghanaian.
All the same, three major electoral political traditions emerged in Ghana since the 1950s, namely, the Nkrumahist tradition, the Danquah-Busiaist tradition, and the more recent Rawlingsist tradition. These traditions are identified with their founders — each a commanding political figure — and are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In political terms, the Nkrumahists are generally considered "leftist" and "progressive," the Danquah-Busiaists more "rightist" and more "conservative," and the Rawlingsists "populist" and "progressive." In practice, however, the traditions are less distinguishable by ideological orientation than by dominant personalities and ethnic origins.
Against this background, the opposition call for multiparty democracy had to overcome great odds, not least of which was the intense prejudice of the chairman of the PNDC against political parties. Rawlings strongly believed that party politics had hitherto produced two forms of abuse of power — the "corrupt dictatorship" of the Kofi Abrefa Busia regime (1969-72) and the "arrogant dictatorship" of the Nkrumah (1957-66) and Limann (1979-81) governments.
Nonpartisan, honest, and accountable government would provide an effective antidote to these abuses, he argued. Indeed, Rawlings appeared to have an almost fanatical belief that corruption was at the root of nearly all of Ghana's problems and that, if only it could be stamped out, the country would return to its former prosperity.
After the lifting of the ban on party politics in May 1992, several rival splinter groups or offshoots of earlier organizations, notably the so-called Nkrumahists and Danquah-Busiaists, as well as new groups, lost no time in declaring their intention to register as political parties and to campaign for public support. The National Democratic Congress (NDC) , National Independence Party (NIP), New Patriotic Party (NPP), People's Heritage Party (PHP), and People's National Convention (PNC) were major parties organized to contest 1992 presidential election. NDC was the party of Rawlings and PNDC; NPP was largely Asante-based, nominated Adu Boahen; NIP, PHP, and PNC all Nkrumahists. NDC elected, formed first government under Fourth Republic; remaining parties formed opposition. In 1993 NIP and PHP formed (new) People's Convention Party (PCP).
Ethnicity continues to be one of the most potent factors affecting political behavior in Ghana. For this reason, ethnically based political parties are unconstitutional under the Fourth Republic.
The principal democracy and governance problem in Ghana remains the excessive concentration of political power in the executive branch. The powers of the president dwarf those of the other branches of government. The president in Ghana possesses vast political and economic resources that he can employ to secure political support. Electoral competition is the only real check on executive dominance, as the opposition party will work to win power, often at almost any cost.
But although both major political parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), accept the legitimacy of the rules that govern politics in Ghana, these rules have serious flaws. The elite consensus among political parties is an agreement to maintain the status quo, regardless of its increasingly negative impact on democratic practice and good governance, because it offers a clear path to gaining power and thus access to the vast network of state resources.
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