Every political observer presently in Ghana and across the Diaspora feels the buzz of the internal political contest within the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Both the traditional and the various new media platforms have expectedly provided the needed oxygen required for an important contest like this to dominate debate and analysis within the increasingly transformed Ghanaian public sphere.
While we are all waiting with bated breath on the eventual climax of the contest in early November that will finally pit the two major contenders (the Assin Central Member of Parliament, Kennedy Ohene Agyapong and the incumbent vice-president, Mahamudu Bawumia) against each other, various developments stemming from the previous internal political competitions and the forthcoming one require sober and wider reflections from all stakeholders of Ghana’s politics including the political parties, media, academic community, civil societies and the general citizenry.
This is because, while we are undoubtedly witnessing the various controversies in the internal political processes of the NPP leading to the resignation of one of the key contenders and hitherto heir to the throne, Alan John Kwadwo Kyeremanteng, internal elections in Ghana across the two major parties (National Democratic Congress and New Patriotic Party) since the beginning of the political transition in Ghana in 1992 under the so-called ‘third wave democratization process’ have largely mirrored elites’ competitions and contestations.
This is in spite of the numerous reforms across the political parties to ‘sanitize’ the system and give it a veneer of mass participation. With one or two exceptions since the beginning of the so-called liberal order steered by the military under the leadership of Chairman Jerry Rawlings, incumbent presidents or candidates favoured by incumbent presidents during internal presidential contests in almost all cases have emerged as the winners or presidential candidates of their parties.
For instance, in 1992, the then-incumbent military head of state Jerry Rawlings easily represented his party as the candidate for the presidential elections after some internal deliberations with his party leadership. Although at that time, one can easily point at the military incumbency at play, President Rawlings per se had never hidden his abhorrence to any form of internal or even external democratic competition. Many political pundits especially his opponents interpreted this stance from Jerry Rawlings as a vestige of his militarism and an unalloyed desire to perpetuate his military dictatorship that dominated Ghana for almost two decades.
However, his consistent argument, just like that of President Kwame Nkrumah of the first republic was the inherent national division and unhealthy and often destructive political partisanship that is inherent in multi-party politics. Both Nkrumah and Rawlings believed that these ethnic, political and social divisions inherent in the competitive liberal order have the tendency to distract the country from its cherished goal of economic and social development.
While the views of both Rawlings and Nkrumah remain debatable, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the entrenching ideals of globalization and the near universalisation of democracy starting from the early 1990s, at least these national leaders were not hypocritical with their positions, views and actions on the political practices of the country.
However, global and local pressures forced Jerry Rawlings not only to acquiesce to the constitutional order but also to accept the two-term limit rule now rooted in the Ghanaian constitutional order. Therefore, he had no other alternative than to hand over political power after the 2000 elections. Thus, in the run-up to the year 2000 presidential election, military incumbency gave way to democratic incumbency when the NDC selected Prof John Evans Atta Mills as the flagbearer of the then-ruling NDC with the prodding of President Rawlings.
Although the so-called ‘Swedru Declaration’ was detested by some key and ambitious members of the ruling NDC leading to several resignations and indifference of scores of them, particularly those led by Augustus “Goosie” Obuadum Tanoh, the NDC under Jerry Rawlings at least maintained its revolutionary values of what they believed as ‘consensus democracy’ internally despite derision from the then main opposition NPP of lack of internal democracy and democratic dictatorship.
Nonetheless, the NPP in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 elections had largely gone through some form of internal contests involving some of the party’s key contenders such as Prof Albert Kwadwo Adu Boahen, former President John Agyekum Kufuor, and current President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo among several others.
There was thus a veneer of liberal democratic values in the NPP as against what were perceived as illiberal NDC which from 1992 to at least 2000 elections had refused to accept any form of internal contest. In the NDC, the elites whether military as in 1992 or civilian as in both 1996 and 2000 were seen to be in absolute control and there was no question of opening the frontiers for mass participation in the internal contest to elect the party’s presidential candidate.
However, in the run-up to the 2004 elections, the pendulum swung and the NDC now in opposition allowed reforms that opened the internal political processes to the masses within the party while the now ruling NPP, fearing division within their ranks and distraction on President Kufuor’s government only allowed consensus democracy that permitted the popular acclamation of the incumbent president as the party’s presidential candidate.
While there was limited or no internal dissention in the 2004 elections, the run-up to the 2008 elections however posed the gravest risks to NPP’s internal cohesion and unity as was seen in the deployment of various predatory measures including intimidation of government appointees, excessive propaganda and massive financial and material inducement to the delegates to maximise the votes of Alan John Kwadwo Kyeremateng, the candidate favoured by incumbent president Kufuor.
Although incumbent President Kufuor was openly non-committal in expressing or showing support for his heir apparent between the two major contenders (Alan and Akufo-Addo) for obvious reasons, few observers will disagree with the claim that he not only favoured Alan but deployed every conceivable predatory approach to get him voted as the party’s candidate for the 2008 election that was to decide who takes over from him as the President of Ghana.
By Abdul Hakim Ahmed, PhD, Political Science Lecturer, University of Education, Winneba