Where is democracy dividend, is it interchange or change?
Ghana was showing that democracy could work in Africa without arbitrary arrests and detentions, without repressive measures and censorship, and with complete freedom for political opposition groups to work within the country’s legal and constitutional framework…….
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The coup has come at a time when it can do the greatest damage to the future of Ghana, at a time of very great economic difficulties arising from increasing costs of imports and to a drastic fall in our export prices, particularly cocoa, and to the heavy burden of debts inherited by my government from the military transitional government which in turn inherited it from Nkrumah’s regime. — Dr. Kofi Busia, January 15, 1972.
This rendition of the state of our country in my title for the epistle today was lifted from a friend’s Facebook wall the other day. I believe it captures in all its brevity, the history of our growth and development since 1966. The quotation from Dr Busia is just a fragment from the collections of statements and letters compiled after his death in 1978. They are reactions to the coup of General Acheampong which ousted Busia from power. It also captures the essence of the economic exertions of all our governments since the overthrow of President Nkrumah in February 1966.
We are voting next Wednesday, December 7, 2016, to choose a President and 275 members of Parliament in a quadrennial ritual mandated by the fourth Republican Constitution. After all the vigorous campaigning at all corners of Ghana by all competing parties with different manifestoes all with their attendant excitement, it is quite logical to ask what we are voting for.
What is striking about the several letters in the publication issued after the death of Dr Busia in 1978 is the heavy concentration on the problems of Ghana herein presented in macroeconomic terms, deficits, debt-servicing, inflation, devaluation, falling commodity prices, etcetera, in the known gloomy manner of our governments since 1966. We have accepted this narrative of our economic conditions since 1966. The longest surviving military regime in this country, the Provisional National defence Council (PNDC) of then Chairman Rawlings is distinguished by its successful implementation of the Economic Recovery Programme. It implemented the ideological prescriptions of its opponents.
It is only the military government of the late General Acheampong which sought to create a different, confident narrative for our economy in the early years of his regime. Not surprisingly we have parties in this country seeking power today at the polls, promising more of the same gloomy narrative which never ends as new problems or obstacles are found to intensify our fixation with macro-economic indices as if solutions can be found to eliminate them from our discourse.
The ruling party of President Mahama is doing something quite different moving us away from this perennial fixation with unending problems. The difference is never more stark than today, as the first term in office of President Mahama comes to an end. President Mahama has rightly earned the alias ‘’Commissioner-General’’ as he vigorously roams the country campaigning, and commissioning and inaugurating public projects,the majority of them initiated by his government. He looks and acts determined to spend us out of our usual narrative, but not without criticism from his opponents.
On the other hand, the main opposition party is campaigning on the platform that they are better economic managers in the tired macroeconomic sense. Is that really the case? Because no matter how efficiently and comprehensively one fixes our perennial macroeconomic problems, the voter can only remember and exploit, in his political memory, the tangibles which outlast a party in government. Our parties and regimes since the ouster of Dr Nkrumah in 1966 have mainly concerned themselves with fixing our macroeconomic problems with no end in sight. Why? This is because these problems which affect our economy are the result of cycles of growth and decline which affect all countries.
So what is a government to do not only to escape the travails of the cycles, but acquire tangible and productive assets in so doing which would naturally cushion us and propel us into a progressive growth and development path? In other words, are we going to keep tickling ourselves that our macroeconomic problems only need our prior attention, and leave growth and development to forces beyond governmental control, or we are consciously spending heavily on public projects which also happen to be productive engines of growth that will in due course, give our people jobs, housing, food and good health and education?
What President Mahama has done differently is change the way we look at our economic, social and political problems from one of valiantly but unsuccessfully confronting the macro-economy, to one in which the necessary physical structures lead in the solution. I attended the first secondary school built in this country, and I know how the construction of a school can impact the community in which it is situated. The progress and development that the presence of a school in a community portends is unimaginably diverse. It is the same with a hospital and even more so with good roads to link up our communities and so on. When government adds to these assets factories and manufacturing capacities, then we are well on our way to breaking out of the depressing narrative of cycles of growth and depression which have characterised our economic history since 1966.
Is President Mahama, therefore, the Franklin Roosevelt of Ghana, with his own peculiar New Deal assiduously preparing the grounds to get us permanently out of our unique depression by spending heavily on public works just like Roosevelt did from 1933 to 1945 when he served four terms as American President and lifting his country out of a devastating economic depression?
It would seem that 23 years into our democracy, the much-touted democracy dividend cannot be expected from outside but rather it would be rapid and meaningful development in our own way and at our own pace. If voting for change means a return to the narrative in which nothing tangible can be done unless we fix our debts, deficits, inflation, currency depreciation and other nostrums, then we might and indeed, are better off, devising our path to growth and progress, or as they say, full speed ahead, torpedoes be damned. That dividend was supposed to be the Millenium Challenge funds from which we built the George Bush Highway, right? That highway is just a logical extension of the Tema Motorway constructed by President Nkrumah. Enough said. We are changing our gloomy narrative by seizing the developmental initiative.
Fortunately, the opposition has promised grudgingly, to continue the projects if it wins, thus accepting that our previous narrative was destructive of meaningful progress.