Touted as a model for the practice of modern democracy in Africa, how solid and resilient Ghana’s democracy is will be put to the test once again come December 7, 2020. The country adopted for itself the practice of democracy with promulgation of the 1992 constitution that came into force in 1993. The country ever since has proved it really grasps what it takes to satisfy requirements of the practice.
It has since the general elections of 1992 moved on to organise a relatively free five successive elections. In spite of the obviously envious feat chalked up over the decades with regard to the organisation of credible, free and fair elections, the electoral process cannot be overly rated as having fully arrived yet. The untold reality is that the comparisons have been with fellow African states who seem to have been struggling with the practice over the years. In the country’s bid to rub shoulders with advanced democracies like the United States, Britain and a host of others, it is advisable efforts be made to tackle identified challenges before they degenerate into something more untoward.
Indeed, the advanced democracies being alluded to – others might argue – are yet to arrive as well, and certainly have had challenges of their own. But the overt nature of the challenges as pertains to Ghana’s still-maturing democracy certainly affords the country no chance of sweeping issues under the carpet as if all is well. Several bits of the challenges faced by the Ghanaian electoral system were brought to bear during the 2012 electoral petition hearing.
And the way forward, in the words of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, is that as a nation “We must not be blind to the flaws in our electoral system which the judicial review has brought to light”. It is a critical situation that demands concern from all who hold the peace of the county Ghana at heart. It is this concern, I believe, that has premised the argument over the years that there is a thin line between the peace the country has enjoyed till now and war. If this is the case, what do we have to do as a people?
I believe now is the time to wake up to the challenges facing us and confront them. With barely seven months to the December 2020 elections, this article will set the basis for the need of more concerted efforts to tackle the situation by apprising the country – stakeholders, likewise donor communities – of the challenges that stare us in the face as a country. What then are the challenges going forward? This discussion, as much as possible, gives the theme a more holistic treatment from perspectives of the period before, during and after elections.
The discussion should better be understood from this point, because according to the Kofi Annan International Peace Training Centre (KAIPTC) elections 2012 categorised under these three phases of the electoral process revealed that the pre-election recorded a significant level of violent incidents, while the election period and after recorded a lower level and still less respectively.
For a better understanding, the challenges can better be spread under three broad topics: institutional, human and technological. Under institutional, the consideration should be focused on how empowered the Electoral Commission, security agencies like the Police, and civil society groups are to lend their support and live up to their responsibilities in order that no stone is left unturned in getting the right thing done.
Our institutions, especially the security agencies, were very much exposed in the period prior to elections 2012 – such that they failed woefully in their duty to analyse ‘secret tapes’ purported to reveal grand schemes by certain political actors within the NPP and NDC to subvert the electoral process. In my opinion, there should be better reasons for these cases that were widely reported to be left unattended. These agencies, per the sensitive nature of their responsibilities to the state, are ideally expected to be non-biased. This, unfortunately, is not the reality.
Many culprits in the past have been let off the hook because of their political affiliations. When this becomes the norm, then the citizenry begins to develop a sense of mistrust in the services rendered by these agencies. People in the long run will take issues into their own hands because of the feeling these security agencies are not credible enough to deliver their services devoid of fear and favour.
This is invariably a threat to the services these agencies are constitutionally mandated to offer the larger public, especially in times of milestone events like elections. Though I do not seek to justify the use of thugs and ‘macho-men’ in policing or protecting whether election materials or a political interest, it can be argued that this situation is widespread and exists because of this general mistrust held by the public.
The media space arguably poses a greater threat. The media space now more than ever has become an avenue for political actors to engage each other in endless bantering. This more often has resulted in unwarranted exchanges that are likely recipes for inciting their respective followers against each other. Credited as one of the few countries that strictly upholds media freedom to its apex, it is no surprise that the media field now attracts so much investment.
The landscape has proliferated with so many television and radio stations. If the saying that “From him that much is given, much is expected” is true, then as a responsible country now is the time we have to turn efforts into drafting policies that serve as guides to regulating the work of these media outlets. However, the influx of social media platforms seems to have placed the fight beyond reach.
Political activists have the chance – due to the unregulated nature of the medium – to churn out certain untrue information, which in the majority of cases border on the sensitive nature of maintaining the relative peace the country enjoys. It would be very unfortunate to assume a nonchalant posture and do nothing to curtail the enormous challenges social media platforms pose to the country’s peace during the 2020 elections. The statistics are that as of November 15, 2015 there were as many as 2,900,000 Ghanaians registered on Facebook alone.
It may be true that the figure could be halved for users on other equally vibrant platforms like Instagram and Twitter. It is worth noting that the Ghanaian now more than ever relies so much on social media for information. And if what happened during Elections 2012 is anything to go by, then it means many Ghanaians will depend on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter for results from the various voting centres come December 7, 2020.
However, it appears the unregulated nature of these sites will pose a serious challenge to the country if issues are not taken seriously. Many in current times have used the social media platform to spread hoaxes which nearly, if not actually, sent the whole country into a state of confusion. An example of the threat, if care is not taken, an unregulated social media platform poses is the case of a claimed circulation from the Office of the President that went viral earlier this year announcing a ministerial reshuffle – only for us to be informed hours later that there was no reshuffle as purported by the circulation. Another sensitive issue for consideration is the source of funding for our political parties.
Politics is now money, and essentially without money no one can survive the beauty of the gigantic billboards, flyers and the others so common with the season. I have not forgotten what it takes to get an endorsement from the so-called celebrities – and I doubt any one of them endorses for a song. This is money. So, the question is, where do our politicians get the monies to finance their activities? What do I mean by their activities?
By this, I make reference to campaigning, rallies, campaign songs or tunes and the like. When it comes to funding activities of political parties – like campaigns or administrative duties, the reality is that parties might be forced to solicit financial support beyond national borders. The danger is that most of these supports come with strings attached to them. This eventually led to numerous cases of abuse of incumbency and its accompanying corruption. Now is the time for regulation. Why the need to regulate political source of funding?
In the wisdom of the advocates for regulating sources of political funds, regulations are necessary in that they would help to safeguard the political process from unnecessary foreign interest and interference. The shared belief, also, is that in regulating the sources of funding, the national interest will be protected from falling into criminal hands. The absence of such regulations has led to the situation wherein parties – both old and new – search for more lucrative sources of financing; especially from external private sector sources in exchange for investment opportunities, as well as leverage on the international scene.
Worse is the possibility of entanglement of political parties with the international, domestic and regional criminal community. The benefits of regulations of a kind are transparency, limitation on political discretion, and the opportunity to create a political environment built on greater accountability and consolidated democratic practice. To be able to arrive at this aim, the various national legislative bodies, civil society groups and the donor community ought to help the country in drafting and passing into law a bill to regulate how political parties source funds now and in the future.
The Institute of Economic Affairs-Ghana has also suggested that for the country to be enabled to fight such tendencies in future, concerted efforts should be taken to implement the Akosombo 2 declaration on enhanced public support for political parties. It further advocates the establishment of political party’s support – which would be used to support the activities of these political parties. Atop the list is the Electoral Commission with its bits of challenges.
It is not only faced with the problem of funding, but also staffing and the difficulty in winning the people’s trust. Yes, there are still masses out there which cannot and do not keep trust in the Commission’s ability to organise a credible, free and fair election. But whatever the mistrust, we should not lose sight of the fact that it is this same Commission that has seen us through all these years. Our neighbours have even trusted in the Commission’s abilities enough to in times past seek its advice in their given situations, so why not we ourselves?
I believe the Commission will deliver like never before. But the EC definitely cannot do it alone, therefore there is a need for us to lend our support to this common cause. The issue of trust, I think, emanates from the power vested in a single party president to appoint who heads the Commission at a point in time. But the president I trust cannot make a decision that would not favour the country.
Samuel Tettey, Director of Elections at the EC, revealed that experience gathered from the NPP and NDC primaries showed the Commission has a crucial challenge of malfunctioning biometric equipment ahead of the 2016 general elections. My simple opinion is its man that made the machine; and what man expects the machine to do, man himself can do better. And it simply lies in our sense of loving and doing right. Our ‘yes’ should be a ‘yes’ and ‘no’, a ‘no’. No matter how perfect the machine can be made, it cannot beat the perfection of man.
These are far-reaching expositions on what lies ahead for the country come December 2020. The fact of the case is simple: the world is watching and has full expectation that the country will not fail this time around. The former chief of the Nigeria Electoral Commission, Professor Attahiru Jega, has urged the country to beat Nigeria by ensuring the forthcoming elections are free, fair and credible.
At the 25th anniversary celebration of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Prof Jega attributed at length that Nigeria did not disappoint in staging very successful, peaceful, free, fair and credible elections. He urged that the country to use the Nigeria elections as the standard in convincing the world. If the Nigerian experience is anything to go by, then it is prudent for the country to consider all the necessary reforms that their system was allowed to experience in order to replicate a similar feat come December 7th.
The world is watching to once more applaud us for the success we have enjoyed since the birth of our democracy. And in making it, we must be informed that even the slightest of effort counts! As religious as we are, I cannot end without saying God bless our homeland.
>>>The writer can be reached on [email protected] or 0241177414
The post Prince Botwe’s thoughts…. Tackling the challenges of elections appeared first on The Business & Financial Times.
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