Our Democracy, Our Pride
Before Independence Day, when the President revealed the theme (Our Democracy, Our Pride) for the celebration during his State of the Nation Address (SONA), I wrote in full support of it.
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It was a very appropriate theme for the occasion, given some of the emerging challenges to Ghana’s democracy as captured by various good governance and democracy indices, as well as surveys, notwithstanding our progress.
Ghana’s Democracy – Positive developments
From the speech, this is what I gathered as the President’s list of the positive developments about Ghana’s democracy – a) free speech; b) vigorous media; c) use of the courts for dispute resolution; d) improvement in the conduct of elections and e) judicial system’s adherence to established rules and procedures.
These are critical to a well-functioning democracy and the President is right to point to them as positive developments about Ghana’s democracy. Take the media space for example. When one compares our media landscape today with what it looked like at the beginning of the Fourth Republic, there is not just growth in numbers but also a rich diversity of opinions that are shared across this expanded landscape. The President noted this when he said, “there is no danger of dissenting voices not being heard on any subject.” It is the vigorous media that is making this happen.
Ghanaians have also come to appreciate this vigorous media space and express strong support for media rights and freedoms. In the most recent Afrobarometer survey (2022), seven out of ten (70%) Ghanaians expressed support for media rights.
Or consider our eight elections held so far. Many steps have been taken to improve the integrity of the process to ensure free and fair elections. It may be tempting to point to the two disputed elections (2012 and 2020) as evidence of a flawed electoral system. I disagree. These disputes, especially the 2012 one, offered us opportunities to address lapses in the electoral process which the adjudication process laid bare. This result was an improvement in how the 2016 election was conducted.
Related to the above point is the maturity of the choice of the courts as the avenue for seeking redress of grievances by aggrieved parties in those election disputes. We are certainly no strangers to the violent resolution of election disputes in other countries, thus making our choice of the courts an important development for our democracy.
We are far from a perfect electoral system, but we have made great strides.
Ghana’s Democracy – Challenging developments
The very things the President pointed out as positive developments are also areas of current challenges we cannot ignore. Let me repeat the list from the previous section and substantiate my point about why they are also areas of challenge for our democracy – a) on free speech, there has been a seventeen-percentage point drop (Afrobarometer 2008 vs. 2022) in the percentage of Ghanaians saying “they are completely free to say what they think” and b) on a vigorous media, no more than 10 per cent of Ghanaians say they trust information from both private and public media institutions “a lot” according to Round 9, 2022 of the Afrobarometer survey.
Even as the President highlighted the use of our courts for dispute resolution and the judicial system’s adherence to established rules and procedures, only 10 per cent of Ghanaians say they trust the courts of law “a lot” as per Afrobarometer Round 9, 2022. To put this in perspective, it represented a staggering fifteen percentage point decline when compared to Afrobarometer Round 7, 2017.
And lastly, while the President celebrates improvement in the conduct of our elections, and rightly so, across eight rounds of the Afrobarometer survey, only forty-five per cent (45%) of Ghanaians rate our elections as “completely free and fair.”
These challenges are not raised to downplay the positive developments noted by the President. As he said “when we look around our neighbourhood, we might be tempted to think that our work is done, but we, Ghanaians, have never been known to settle for mediocrity. We aim for the best in every field.”
This is exactly the spirit in which these challenges are being raised – to remind Ghanaians that despite the many positive developments in our democracy, there are real challenges that need urgent attention.
As I have been saying over the last several weeks, I strongly encourage our political parties to make the challenges our democracy faces and more importantly how to address them, a central part of the 2024 election campaign.
Remember, the only way we can keep “Our Democracy, Our Pride” is to consolidate the gains but also fix our challenges. As the President warned, “we dare not relapse.”
NB: The writer is the Executive Director of Democracy Project, a political think tank.
