What’s at stake for Ghana’s democracy on December 7?

I have just returned after two weeks in Ghana; my first time in the country with an imminent general election.

I was in Ghana to deliver the 19th annual ‘Kronti ne Akwamu (Democracy and Good Governance) Public Lecture for the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), launch my new book, Revolution and Democracy in Ghana: The Politics of Jerry Rawlings, published by Digibooks, and deliver a lecture to 300 political science students at the University of Ghana, Legon. 

In addition, I interviewed three senior members of the Church of Pentecost and discussed the state of democracy in the country with many people. 

My impression of Ghana’s democratic health is that many, perhaps most, Ghanaians are worried about the quality of democracy in the country.

After 32 years of the Fourth Republic, flaws in the democratic regime are apparent, including an over-powerful presidency, a weak legislature, growing, increasingly egregious corruption, rampant vote buying and widespread suspicion that the Electoral Commission is not capable of running a free and fair election. Whatever the outcome on December 7, it seems likely that the losing presidential candidate will challenge the result. 

What is going wrong with Ghana’s democracy? Democratic backsliding is a long-term international trend. According to the American non-governmental organisation Freedom House, 2023 was the 17th consecutive year of decline in global freedom, implying widespread democratic degeneration.

Sweden’s Varieties of Democracy (‘V-Dem’) team finds that the level of democracy now enjoyed by the average global citizen is down to 1986 levels. 

Democratic backsliding

Democratic erosion is a global phenomenon, affecting nearly three-quarters of people in the world. Although there is no consensus on the definition of democratic backsliding, it is broadly understood as an incremental within-regime deterioration of qualities associated with democratic governance as opposed to a full-blown regime transition to autocracy or a coup d’état.

Democratic backsliding occurs when governments retain many or some democratic structures but also adopt illiberal practices, such as executive aggrandisement and media censorship.

Regimes showing the characteristics of illiberal democracy employ often subtle and shrewd measures to constrain civil liberties and political freedom.

Ghana is showing clear signs of democratic backsliding and it is essential that the trend is reversed. If it is not, Ghana will lose its hard-won reputation as a democratic leader in Africa.

Why does this matter? Global investors, whether from the West, China, Russia, Turkey or elsewhere, prefer to invest in countries that are peaceful, stable and secure. Such countries are nearly always democracies.

If Ghana becomes ‘just another’ African country with a democratic constitution but undemocratic practices, this would undermine peace, including religious tolerance – one of Ghana’s jewels in the crown, and encourage instability and insecurity while frightening off potential foreign investors. 

Foreign governments and potential investors, looking at Ghana from the outside, see a thriving democracy, with a relatively strong state, robust and dynamic civil society and diverse and thriving media.

What does democratic backsliding imply for Ghanaians? My impression, following six visits to Ghana over the last two years or so, is that the widespread external view of relative democratic health is not shared by Ghanaians. Social media is rife with condemnations of the current political system while Afrobarometer reports growing support among Ghanaians for military rather than democratic rule.

Military rule promises yet rarely deliver strong, purposeful, incorrupt government, an alternative to machinations and corruption of governments that take power via the ballot box in relatively free and fair elections.

Action

What is to be done? There is no mileage to be gained in presuming that everything will be okay and that the democratic system that Ghana has enjoyed for more than three decades will somehow magically correct things.

The problem is that those who gain power by the ballot box to form the next government will have a vested interest in perpetuating the status quo: business as usual. But this is not a viable way forward. 

I doubt that Ghanaians are prepared to accept with equanimity another four years of democratic and economic disappointment. Jobs are increasingly scarce and the value of the cedi against the dollar continues to decline -meaning that essential imports priced in dollars are beyond the capacity of many ‘ordinary’ people to buy- powerful people seem to be able to milk the system for their own benefit, grotesque levels of wealth for the few co-exists with increasingly dire poverty for the many… and then there is galamsey, which poses an existential threat.

Several well-informed people told me when I was in Ghana recently that the country will need to import water in the quite near future because galamsey has polluted waterways and water supplies so badly that it is no longer safe to drink the water in many parts of the country. 

Ghana goes to the polls on December 7. I hope very much that there will be peaceful elections and a worthy winner. But this would be only the start of something, not the culmination.

The incoming government must urgently and with great purpose and determination address the egregious ills of the current democratic system, some of which are noted in this article. 

Failure to do so seriously threatens Ghana’s democratic future. Act now and thrive, delay and face the consequences, is my message to the new government.

The writer is an Emeritus Professor of Politics, London Metropolitan University, UK.