What an election this one turned out to be
Since we went to the polls last week Wednesday and elected for ourselves a new President and a new Parliament, I have been looking for the larger meaning of the choices we made on that day, the real import of the figures underlying the victory of the winners, and those for the defeated, and the fate of our country Ghana in the aftermath, as we all prepare to welcome our new President into office next year on Saturday, January 7, 2017.
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Yes the results bespeak very loudly a comprehensive electoral defeat for the ruling and now outgoing National Democratic Congress (NDC) government. The bare figures tell a story of a tsunami that has swept aside President Mahama and the NDC from office without any flicker of redemption, and that is precisely where my problem begins. I believe strongly that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) threw a sucker punch which gave them victory, and not any of the trite reasons we are regaled with at such times. The only new argument I am accepting now is that hate and envy are very useful political goods.
A cursory examination of the actual figures, the depth and spread of the victory of the triumphant NPP, led by now President-Elect Nana Akufo-Addo, reveals some facts which fly in the face of the trends in our elections since 1992 and even farther back since the first national election in 1951. I have no intention to patronise my loyal readers by arguing that the NPP did not win this election. It did. But there are questions which I cannot answer adequately because the full facts are not in.
Doubts
I am very certain some may consider such an excursion unnecessary once President Mahama and his party have graciously conceded defeat. There is, therefore, no need to act churlishly and seek to undermine the legitimacy of the new incoming government by interrogating the foundations of its inauguration into office. Of course, those who think so do not even realise they do the same thing when they call for a recount or re-collation in certain constituencies where the NDC won, or when they resorted to the courts in the previous election.
My own doubts about the scale of this defeat can await later epistles. Meanwhile, I disregard elaborate explanations being proffered in the same manner that we were treated to following the change of governments in 2000 and 2008. I consider them as mere propaganda, to wit, a valiant attempt to craft a lazy narrative of acceptance of the incongruous and the weird. Yes, because I believe with Karl Marx that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, then as a farce.
President Nana Akufo-Addo has the opportunity now to be the Deng Hsiao-Ping of Ghana. Deng took part in the Long March that brought Mao Tse-Tung to power in Communist China in 1949, and suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution. He is now accredited with the opening up of the Chinese society and its economy, the rationalisation of its politics, and the emergence of China as a credible world power economically and politically, as well as militarily. His favourite saying of ‘’Let a thousand flowers bloom’’ captured his belief in the capacity of a China with divergent views to grow in that diversity of thought and action. Why do I recommend Deng to our new President? Because he was quite old when he emerged after the death of Mao in 1976, and was equally diminutive in stature.
Independent prosecutor
I have a few concerns though. The pledge to introduce the concept of an independent prosecutor will require a constitutional amendment, meaning it would take more than six months for it to be effected, all things being equal. I heard our new President say in a BBC interview, justifying such a change in our justice system and the unending fight against corruption as a bold attempt to depoliticise corruption and the fight to extirpate it in our body politic. I pray that he succeeds because the idea that only incoming governments can check the real or imagined malfeasance of previous governments is primitive, and destructive of national cohesion and unity. It also invests our electoral contests with too much apprehension and anxiety which can very well threaten the fabric of our nation.
I say this because I refuse to accept that corruption is our biggest problem. I agree with late Prof. Folson that development is our biggest problem. If our elected governments cannot deliver development either in terms of needed infrastructure or the provision of public welfare, it is the legitimacy of democratic government that will be at stake. This leads directly into the argument of incompetence directed at the NDC of President Mahama by the NPP during the campaign. If we have the resources but our problem is good management, when should voters start questioning the fidelity of the incoming government to its lavish promises? Would an argument that ‘we met empty coffers’ be an acceptable explanation for non-performance?
However, even more fundamental, do we expect our governments to provide development or public welfare? This cuts the ideological argument into sterile analysis without meat for the expectant electorate. If you voted for the NPP, are you denying the importance of physical development, or taking away from government the responsibility to lead in the provision of the big projects which alone can employ our unemployed, house our unhoused and feed our hungry folk?
The usual suspects who screamed to the rooftops that the winner-takes-all system we operate is inherently evil are eerily silent, proving the dishonesty in their loud claims. Of course President Akufo-Addo is yet to set up his government, and I await the usual criticism that it is made up of family and friends, as if a government working for our collective good must be composed of enemies. I also lie in wait for the dishonest academics and their accomplices who argued that parties are elected for a maximum two terms and give way to another, a constitutional and legal lie that will come to haunt them next time we go to the polls. In the event, however, I congratulate President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on his victory in the 2016 general election, and wish him a successful tenure as our next President.