Is Ghana Still a Democracy?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

The West African nation of Ghana held presidential and legislative elections on Dec. 7, with incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo from the center-right New Patriotic Party (NPP) again besting opponent John Dramani Mahama of the center-left National Democratic Congress (NDC) with a slim majority of 51.59 per cent of the vote against Mahama’s 47.36, thus avoiding a second round.

The two also went head-to head in 2016, when Akufo-Addo defeated Mahama, who had himself four years earlier won the presidency against then challenger Akufo-Addo. In 2008, running on the NPP banner, Akufo-Addo lost to the NDC’s John Atta Mills, who died in office.

This will be Akufo-Addo’s final term in accordance with the Ghanaian constitution. Mahama’s defeat in the 2016 presidential race had marked the first time since the reintroduction of democratic rule that an incumbent president had stood for re-election and lost.

Both men hail from long-established political families. Akufo-Addo’s father, Edward, was one of the so-called “Big Six” who led Ghana to independence in 1957. John Mahama’s father, Emmanuel Adama, was one of the first ministers of state for the northern region under Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.

Akufo-Addo’s NPP and Mahama’s NDC each won 137 seats. One constituency was won by an independent candidate.

Youth unemployment, security concerns and effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy were among the top issues Ghanaians were considering when voting. The NPP administration had introduced free senior high school, which the party campaigned heavily on.  

This was the first time that an election was held without the presence of former president Jerry Rawlings, who died Nov. 12. Rawlings, a military officer, came to power in a coup d'état in 1979 and headed a military junta until 1992.

Although the election was peaceful, the post-campaign period was contentious. There had already been clashes between NPP and NDC supporters, with some killed, as well as attacks on Electoral Commission officials.

Moreover, civil society representatives raised concerns about what they claimed were alarming levels of ethnocentric hate speech used by politicians and alleged abuse of state resources.

Ethnolinguistic affiliations play a role in Ghana, opposing the poorer North to the wealthier Ashanti region. Politicking and political communication in Ghana during elections rely heavily on ethnic influence, with the NDC representing the Ewe in the poorer Northern Volta region, and the NPP representing the Akans in the Ashanti region.

Ethnic polarisation has aligned with political polarisation to the extent that most people who belong to a certain ethnic group become members of a particular political organization or party aligned with it.

The NDC has rejected the results and said they planned to appeal. Mahama warned his opponent not to “steal” the election, accusing the sitting president of using the military to intimidate voters, and saying the verification process hadn’t been followed, making the vote “illegal.” He also claimed his party really won 140 parliamentary seats.

John Boadu, general secretary of the NPP warned about the implications of accusations coming from the NDC. “Creating insinuations creates a lack of credibility on our whole election process.”

This is a disturbing turn of events because Ghana has held competitive multiparty elections and undergone peaceful transfers of power between the two main political parties since 1996, following the resumption of democracy, with the NPP victorious four times, the NDC three.

Ghana is one of only four sub-Saharan African countries ranked “free” in 2020 on the Freedom of the World index that measures political rights and civil liberties. One reason? Ghana has a strong and independent media and consistently ranks in the top three countries in Africa for freedom of speech and press freedom.

As Joseph Yaw Asomah, a sociologist at St. Thomas University in Fredericton asserts, Ghanaian private media address political corruption through investigative reporting, agenda-setting, providing a forum for anti-corruption discussions, and acting as a pressure group for institutional and legal reforms as well as political accountability.

But the improper exploitation and deployment of ethnic sentiments for party support can pose a danger to democratic development. Ahead of the election, Mahama and Akufo-Addo had signed a peace pact committing to non-violence regardless of the outcome of the vote. We’ll see if this holds.