GHANA’S DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM – A Proposal for A More Inclusive and Functional

Alex Aidoo-Micah and Kwaku A. Danso

(Part 1)

Part 2

In this part we show how the current fragile democratic system can be modified and made more functional and responsive to peoples’ needs. It will take only a small modification to fit our traditional systems with influence of local decentralized leadership, and will be a less costly selection process devoid of the current corruption, political greed and ostentatious display of questionable wealth.

A Time to Act

To avoid the potential for disruption in Ghana’s political climate as has occurred four times in the past half century, we propose the following changes to our political system. These changes take account of our indigenous ethnic diversity, our history, our economic and developmental challenges and needs. It is aimed at guaranteeing a democratic system that is sustainable and unifies us as a people to help move us to pursue developmental agenda that will bring prosperity and peace to all of us and generations after us.

A New Political System

We hereby propose a new political system as follows:

1. A political system completely devoid of political parties.

Political parties only seem to divide us along tribal lines and the wounds of our division are getting deeper by the day. Besides the extremely unsustainable campaign costs involved (in a nation of very low economic GDP), the partisan politics impairs our sense of objective judgement and breeds inefficiency among politicians. In addition it takes power away from the citizenry to the politician who simply hides under the name of their parties, become unaccountable except to their party, and prone to being corrupt. Where more competent and knowledgeable local representatives were available, the demand of some parties for as much as Ghc15,000 (about $13,000) as the sole prerequisite to being accepted as a candidate for parliamentary elections, leaves a lot of room for questions and sanity, especially in a nation where a lecturer with PhD teaching at the local Universities may earn that in one year. It is like asking an American to pay $75,000 before they can contest on the Republic and Democratic ticket for Congress. That will be ridiculous!

2. A system under which, each constituency will continue to elect its own representative.

Whiles decentralization is mentioned in the 1992 constitution, practical implementation required to empower towns and districts is missing. In this proposed system, however, such local elections will not be based on party or ethnic considerations because there will be no parties. Contestants will be judged purely on their individual merit and their ability to collate and articulate the developmental agenda and priorities of their people. Candidates will be required to demonstrate their ability to mobilise resources to implement such development plans. The contestants will not be imposed on the people by a party or a President; each contestant will have to demonstrate a track record of consistent involvement in the local politics and developmental efforts. Fees to contest must be based on local average income and reflect costs for such elections.

3. A system comprised of two Houses (a bicameral system) The two Houses shall comprise:

The House of MP’s: made up of elected constituency representatives, and The Council of State – a second and superior House comprising of appointed senior/distinguished citizens mostly retired Judges, Doctors, Engineers, Pharmacists, Scientists, Lawyers, Business persons, Corporate Executives, Military Officers, Paramount Chiefs, Chief Farmers, Vice Chancellors, Ministers of Religion, etc and elected representatives of recognised bodies/institutions teachers, doctors, nurses, engineers, university lecturers, lawyers, the TUC, Judges, other professional bodies, etc. In other words, these will be people who have distinguished themselves in their fields of endeavour and are of proven integrity and unquestionable character. Whiles nobody can be prevented from standing for such representative offices, people must be required to verify their assets and competence from their background before standing for offices. They will be required to bring to the House their wealth of expertise, insights, experience and selfless and seasoned propensities to help set, inform, enrich and guide on national developmental agenda and frameworks and bills. They will scrutinise the work of the House of MP’s. The current Council of State is to be proscribed and its functions taken over by the Council of Governors (see point 4 and Figs. 1, 2a & 2b below).

4. A system comprised of a Presidency to be rotated among a 10-member Council of Governors

The members of the Council of Governors will be elected representatives of each of the 10 regions. The President, to be the Head of state and government, will have one fixed term of 5 years after which he will have to leave the Council of Governors but may take up a seat in the Council of State. Each of the other Council members may stay in office for a maximum of two terms if re-elected. The sequence of the rotation of the presidency shall be determined by a televised draw after the first national elections under this new political system. The results will be enshrined into the transitional provisions of the Constitution. The Vice-President shall be the Governor from the last region in the sequence and will rotate in a descending order of the sequence of the presidency. Each Governor shall have oversight responsibility for the administration/governance of their respective regions by working closely with a Regional Minister who is also elected to head a body of Professional staff hired to manage the economic and other affairs of the region. In the unlikely event of the death of a sitting President or a Governor, his or her replacement shall be elected by the region concerned to serve the remaining time on his/her term (Fig. 1).

5. Truly Decentralised with all District Assembly Members and Chief Executives to be Elected

The current Constitution (chapter 20) requires nonpartisan local government elections for the 110 District Assemblies and Unit Committees. This is an extremely important dimension of our democracy in that it seeks to decentralise the political system and to promote grassroots participation in governance.

However, it has been not been possible to make the process immune to party political influence. The Constitution also appears to be diluting the process by empowering the President to appoint 30% of Assembly persons and all Municipal and District Chief Executives as per Articles 242 and 243 respectively. This is wrong and defective and holding back our democratic path and limiting the growth and empowerment of the towns and districts. It is strongly recommended to end this system and allow full non-partisan election of town Mayors, District Chief executives, at the same time as the Assembly and unit committee elections.

Under the proposed reforms, there will be no party influence on the elections and the process will offer an entry point to most politicians as only those who make political contributions and impacts at the grassroots level are likely to get any acknowledgements at constituency and regional levels and, for that matter, at the national level. In addition, it is proposed that in order to truly decentralise governance, all assembly persons and municipal and district chief executives as well as city mayors are to be elected at the local council level. The frequency of the elections will also have to reflect the proposed change to the general five-year term political cycle.

6. Electioneering Process

The implication of these reforms is that the electorate will vote for

(a) a Governor (Regional Representative to the Ruling Council),

(b) Regional Minister,

(c) Member of the National Parliament (or representative from their constituency),

(d) Assembly Member for their town, and

(e) Local committee representative for their town section.

Reflection

A reflection shows that party politics is making us more aware of individual ethnicities rather than our collective national identity; it is making us dissipate our energies in subjective frictions and diatribes instead of directing our energies into constructive national development programmes; while we are embroiled in frenzied altercations under its spell, its protagonists are importuned to loot out the little we have. We can avert revolutions, and like Britain, by being evolutionary.

A ‘’de-partified’’ political system is not an entirely new phenomenon. Between its independence in 1962 and 1986, Uganda’s political history was a chequered one. It was dominated by ethnic rife and violence resulting from a bitter struggle for power with serious ethnicity undertones. After Iddi Amin ousted Milton Obote’s government in 1971 through a military coup, he nearly exterminated the Acholi and Langi ethnic groups because they had supported Obote and also dominated the army. When President Obote came to power again in 1980 elections, the human rights abuses caused by his security forces have been described as the worst ever on the continent. They almost wiped out the Luwero area north of Kampala in a bid to uproot Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA).

Obote was overthrown in military coup in 1985 led by Lt. Gen Basilo Olara-Okello. Under the new government led by Gen. Tito Okello, the violation of human rights were continued and Uganda’s countryside desecrated and ravaged and, again, in a bid to destroy Museveni’s NRA. It is, therefore, probably not surprising that when Yoweri Museveni ousted Gen. Tito Okello in 1986 and formed the National Resistance Movement (NRM), having seen firsthand what the party political system could do an ethnically-diverse people, he established a No-Party political system he called the ‘’Movement’’. Ugandan people were said to have seen reason and this led to their endorsement in a national referendum in March 2000.

It is worthy of note, that by the time Museveni took power, the war-ravaged country with no political stability was the 5th poorest country in the world. Museveni used the peace and stability offered by the new political system –the ‘’Movement’’ – to rebuild the economy a point buttressed by the following excerpt from the U.S. Department of State’s Background Note on Uganda:

"Since assuming power in early 1986, Museveni's government has taken important steps toward economic rehabilitation and adopted policies that have promoted rapid economic development. The country's infrastructure--notably its transportation and communications systems that were destroyed by war and neglect--is being rebuilt. Recognizing the need for increased external support, Uganda negotiated a policy framework paper with the IMF and the World Bank in 1987. It subsequently began implementing economic policies that have resulted in a consistent pace of economic growth over the last 21 years. Growth rates in fiscal years 2008 and 2009 were 8.7% and 7.1%, respectively. Inflation increased from 7.7% in 2007 to 14.2% in 2009, well above the government's annual target average of 5%, but declined dramatically in 2010 as food crop prices decreased. Uganda was the first country to be eligible for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and had virtually all of its foreign debts forgiven by the IMF, World Bank, and major donors (U.S. Department of State, 2011).

Uganda’s GDP (PPP) and real growth over the period have surpassed Ghana (refer to the graph below and compare it with Ghana’s, in part 1, above).

However, President Museveni has put the ‘’Movement’’ under pressure because he failed to incorporate within it an ethnically-robust system by which the people could choose their president. Instead he changed the constitution to allow him perpetrate himself in power. The result is that in July 2005 a national referendum re-adopted a multiparty political system.

The rotational presidency being proposed for Ghana’s political reform, will ensure the system is entirely inclusive and democratic and cannot be hijacked into a dictatorship.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this article and proposal has analyzed the history and performance of Ghana’s democratic journey since Independence, with 5 revolutions and 4 constitutions in only 50 years, and a current democratic system that is so expensive to operate. It also compares our socio-economic development with that of others nations who have done far better and pulled themselves out of poverty faster with less tribal and partisan acrimony and cut-throat competition. It concludes and hence makes recommendation for a far better and more pragmatic and economically feasible system where modern electoral democracy is merged with tradition. In this system, people will have the power to elect (1) constituency and Assembly members, (2) a local town, district and metro chief executives, as well as (3) a Regional Minister, (4) Member of Parliament, in addition to a (5) Regional Governor who will form part of a 10 member Board of governors with a rotating Presidency. A random selection process can be used to select the first President if need be.

Footnote: Alex Aidoo-Micah holds a BSc (Hons) Degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering (KNUST, Ghana), Master of Theology Degree (SLCC, UK), Postgraduate Certificate in Education (UEL, UK), Postgraduate Certificate in Leadership (Univ. of Wales, UK).

Kwaku A. Danso holds is B.S. Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, M.S. and M. Eng. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and PhD in Business & Technology with specialization in Management & Leadership from Capella University, USA. Dr. Danso has worked with many American and international corporations as engineer and manager in the electronics industry in USA, and then in his own finance and real estate business. He is the co-founder and President of Ghana Leadership Union (NGO) and Moderator of the GLU global forum of Ghanaian Professionals. He is the author of “Leadership Concepts and the Role of Government in Africa: The Case of Ghana” (2007).