The bizarre politics of the electoral register!
Two days ago, that is, last Wednesday, in the afternoon, I was regaled with some political developments in our politics after the judgement in the Abu Ramadan case at the Supreme Court was handed down. I take this chance to share some of them (political developments) with you today. Perhaps that way, we would appreciate why I added the word bizarre to the title of today’s column.
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Way back before the formation of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in June 1949, the disagreements that had developed between the leaders of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) and its General Secretary, Kwame Nkrumah had resulted in a brief suspension from office of the latter from his position. Those disagreements centred on the approach to be adopted in the burgeoning struggle for independence. The elderly and professionally contented in the leadership resented the bold and in-your-face methods of the American-educated general secretary, whereas the latter sought even bolder methods to energise the nation and push all towards the victory of the nationalist forces.
UGCC leaders did not think so. They believed that they completely owned both the struggle and their general secretary who they had brought down to do their bidding. But Nkrumah was not the docile errand boy of the Gold Coast bourgeoisie for whom politics was merely a pastime from their professional and vocational pursuits. The energy and dynamism he had brought into the politics of the CPP had effectively transformed the nature of our politics. It had also, naturally, created a solid following for Nkrumah himself, which persists in several forms today.
Dr Nkrumah had the solid backing of the youthful and restless elements in the convention, impatient with the stately pace that these leaders wished for the progress of the struggle for independence. These elements loudly clamoured for the return of the handsome and dashing general secretary to his position so that the struggle would continue under his able direction and bold initiatives.
However, Nkrumah had been suspended because according to the leaders of the UGCC, he had embezzled funds as the general secretary. Under pressure for his reinstatement, he was returned to the national executive and steering committee as the treasurer of the convention. This, for someone accused of embezzlement!? No more eloquent proof of the bizarre untenability of the stale politics of the gentrified UGCC leadership was needed to paint them as irrelevant in Gold Coast politics. And so time consigned them.
Political vindictiveness
The second example is even more related to the effect of the suit filed by Abu Ramadan. It concerns the acrobatics of leading members of the Progress Party (PP) and the government in 1970. Article 71 of the 1969 second Republican Constitution made it illegal for those in the CPP regime who had had adverse findings made against them by the commissions of inquiry set up after the 1966 coup d’etat from holding public office. Mr Awoonor-Williams of the Progress Party, who had contested the leader of the opposition, the National Alliance of Liberals (NAL), Komla A. Gbedemah, took the latter to court to expel him from Parliament so he would have another chance at the electoral cherry in the subsequent by-election.
Believe it or not, the Progress Party government vehemently denied that it instigated this unnecessary act of political vindictiveness. NAL had won only 29 of the 140 parliamentary seats up for grabs in the August 1969 election, as against the PP which had won 104 seats, an overwhelming and stifling majority. In fact, the PP had won all the seats outright in three regions, Ashanti, Brong Ahafo and Central.
Komla Gbedemah had joined Premier Busia in exile when he fled Nkrumah’s Ghana in 1961. He did not only join him but collaborated with Busia in exile to continue the opposition to Nkrumah outside the shores of this country. This level of co-operation was thrown overboard all in the attempt to punish Gbedemah for his alliance with Nkrumah years before.
Of course, nobody believed this bald-faced lie that the government and party were uninvolved in the successful quest to remove Gbedemah from Parliament. The clearest proof of the connection among the party, the government and this case was the fact that Awoonor-Williams was represented by PP party lawyer, Harold Darko. As it were, this case was one of the reasons Colonel Acheampong cited two years later for the forcible removal of the PP government in a coup d’etat.
Reflecting on these two and others last Wednesday, I concluded that our national politics seems to be evolving into the realms of the bizarre and weird. Some of us seem to be fond of making demands on the system of government whose relevance and importance to our happiness, progress, peace and prosperity of all of us are extremely tenuous and far fetched.
It is true that the plaintiff, Abu Ramadan, is a leading member of the People’s National Convention but his lawyer is a legal luminary in the New Patriotic Party (NPP), my own friend, Nana Asante Bediatuo. Moreover, the supposed defect in the voters register is a cause which has been championed by the NPP since 1992, leading right up to the election petition heard in the Supreme Court last year.
Who can prove that the mode of registration of voters favour one party over another since 1992? In what way? The court very wisely, in my opinion, has removed another baseless cause for rejection and contestation of election results by removing the use of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) identity card as a means of validating voter identity in the voter registration process.
In so doing, the decision has also affected the process of preparation for the entire elections programme of the Electoral Commission, occasioned by the Abu Ramadan suit. This is a nation of laws and so it must be, but there are some solid roadblocks to how much aggrieved citizens can seek solace in defeat.