The Significance of Ghana’s Elections in African Democracy.

Ghana’s Elections were held on December 7, 2024. More than 11 million Ghanaians headed to the polls to elect their new President and Members of Parliament.

John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) made a statement of his political comeback, defeating Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Mahama had served as the country’s president in 2012 following the sudden passing away of John Atta Mills in office. Mahama was the country’s vice president then, so he was constitutionally mandated to take over. He was elected president later that year in the country’s general elections and he was president from 2013-2017.

Bawumia was the immediate former Vice President, serving two consecutive terms under Nana Akuffo-Addo (who defeated Mahama in the 2016 general elections).

Ghana’s elections are Africa’s most contested and competitive elections. The country is thus considered to be one of the continent’s mature democracies, ahead of its contemporaries in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.

Ghana’s Electoral Commission: The beau ideal of Ghana’s democratic institutions.

The Electoral Commission of Ghana is the body responsible for overseeing and managing all of Ghana’s public elections. It was formulated upon the promulgation of the 1992 Ghana constitution during the establishment of Ghana’s Fourth Republic.

Ghana’s electoral commission has gained national and international recognition for its professionalism, independence and integrity. It receives widespread acclamation for according fair treatment and transparency in handling major opposition parties.

It has often been used as a benchmark and reference point for establishing robust electoral systems in Africa.

Nonetheless, the maturity of the country’s election processes also extended to how rival political factions respect the outcome of the results. The loser of the elections almost always concedes gracefully as soon as the results of the elections are evident.

The only outlier was the 2012 election in which Akuffo-Addo’s NPP filed an appeal with the country’s Supreme Court alleging election mismanagement. The court overruled the claims brought forward by the NPP.

The civil society and journalism climate also thrive in the country, educating voters on political implications and positions of the candidates, and providing much-needed criticism.

Ghana has had smooth handovers and transitions of power between regimes since the 1992 elections making it the most politically stable country in the West African region.

Given the current circumstances, it would be hard to imagine that Ghana was a country once fraught with military takeovers and unstable civilian rule. However, Ghana’s current democratic stance can be credited to the efforts of one man.

The Legacy of Jerry Rawlings

Ghana became the first Sub-Saharan African country to shake the shackles of colonial rule when it gained independence in March 1957.

The country has a lot going for it at the time; a robust economy, a fairly skilled native population and strong leadership in the hands of Kwame Nkrumah.

By 1966, however, the curse of post-colonial independence had caught up with Ghana. Nkrumah had transformed from being a revolutionary socialist leader to an autocratic ruler, having declared himself President for Life in a flurry of constitutional amendments in 1964. Consequently, he became unpopular with the population that had once endeared him so much and he was ousted in a military coup on February 24, 1966.

The period between 1966 and 1979 was a tough time for the country, as economic woes and unstable leadership bogged it down. It succumbed to the ‘leadership problem’ faced by many of its African compatriots, coming under several military leaders from 1972 to 1979.

In May 1979, however, a young Flight Lieutenant by the name of Jerry John Rawlings led the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), a militant force made up of mostly junior officers in the armed forces, in initiating a coup against the then-head of state Gen. Fred Akuffo. The first coup attempt was botched and Rawlings was arrested, tried and sentenced to death. That was not be the case, however, as members of the AFRC initiated another coup on June 4, 1979, which was much more successful.

Unlike most of the other military leaders before him, Jerry Rawlings allowed the country to hold elections and he handed the government back to civilian rule within three months.

On December 31, 1981, Rawlings initiated yet another coup against the civilian government he had handed power to two years before, led by President Hilla Limann. Limann’s tenure was marked by record levels of inflation, rising foreign debt, and gross public discontent.

This time, Rawlings decided to hold on to power. Rawlings’ military junta, the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) was now tasked with resolving the problems carried over from Limann’s regime. He established close ties with the Soviet Union for the first two years, hoping to make good of Nkrumah’s vision of a socialist utopia. By 1983, he figured that forging close ties with the West was the better alternative if he wished to improve the economic situation of his country.

Rawlings was forced to put in place several austerity measures such as introducing price controls on goods, devaluing the currency and privatizing industry. Despite the huge backlash, including several coup attempts, Rawlings remained resolute in making Ghana a better place. In his own admission, the only reason he felt the need to take control over the country was because ‘he was embarrassed of what the country had become’.

By the 1990s, Rawlings had reversed Ghana’s fortunes from a struggling low-income country into a rapidly developing economy. His strong ties to the West, perhaps embodied most in the scarf diplomacy incident of 1989, gave him access to financial aid which he had used to stabilize the economy.

Nonetheless, Rawlings was committed to transforming Ghana into a democratic country. He instituted the National Commission on Democracy (NCD) shortly after the 1981 coup. In March 1991, the NCD proposed the establishment of a democratic government in Ghana, which laid the groundwork for the drafting of a new constitution and general elections slated for 1992.

Rawlings was announced as the presidential candidate for the PNDC, which later transformed into the National Democratic Council (NDC), for the 1992 general elections.

Nonetheless, Rawlings’ imposing rule had created an unfavourable environment for any opposition movements to compete. He stifled his opposition’s ability to compete against him in the elections by;

• He held a monopoly over newspapers and media outlets with the ability to censor information which made it hard for the opposition to market themselves.
• He imposed a cap on campaign contributions made to his opponents and therefore, opposition parties could not raise enough resources to launch robust campaigns.
• He launched his campaign bid before the ban on opposition parties was fully lifted giving him an unfair headstart in the race.
• He used his access to state resources to strengthen his political position and he travelled across the country granting political favours in exchange for support. He even raised public employee wages by 60% immediately before the elections.

Consequently, the opposition boycotted the elections citing allegations of voter manipulation and a compromised electoral commission. This led to a low voter turnout of only 50%. However, most election observatory bodies acknowledged minor issues during the elections but termed them as being free and fair.

Rawlings won 58.4% of the popular vote, making him the first democratically elected president of Ghana’s Fourth Republic on a four-year term.

In the lead-up to the 1996 general elections, Rawlings introduced several reforms aimed at improving the democratic climate within the country.

• He eased control over the judiciary and civil society.
• He opened up the media environment.
• He extended operational leeway to the opposition parties.
• He increased monitoring and observation of the elections, allowing for more independent oversight and candidate agents.

Despite winning another term in office, Rawlings’ reforms marked the beginning of the culture of openness in the country’s electoral processes. The 1996 elections set a precedent for the country’s elections going forward.

Rawlings stepped down in 2001 after the expiration of his two-term constitutional limit. He conceded to the defeat of his party in the presidential race, led by his former vice president John Atta Mills, in the 2000 general elections. Rawlings oversaw a peaceful transition of power, setting the standard for regime transitions in Ghana.

Rawlings is a divisive figure in Ghana’s political space. Many view him as a revolutionary for his efforts towards democratization and his contribution to Ghana’s economy. His critics cite his harsh violation of human rights, especially given how he treated his political opponents, dissidents and journalists, particularly in the initial years of his reign.

Far from perfect

Economic mismanagement

Despite Ghana’s positive democratic image, the country is currently in a precarious economic situation.

Ghana is still lingering from the adverse effects of the 2022 economic inflation crisis. In fact, the country has had a long-standing inflation problem that dates back to the 1970s.

Inflation levels were as high as 30% in 2003. However, a robust fiscal policy under John Kufuor’s tenure brought inflation down to a manageable 10% by 2007. However, Ghana had also grown dependent on an IMF debt relief program in this time that has managed to help the country stabilize its currency.

The end of the relief program coupled with the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 an increase in oil prices caused inflation levels to rise yet again across the 2010s. The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the situation, worsening the inflation levels which culminated in a record 79% by 2021.

By 2022, Ghana was in all-out crisis. By October 2022, the Ghanaian cedi has lost more than 55% of its value against the US dollar. By December 2022, Ghana’s debt servicing costs had risen so high that the country defaulted repayments on most of its overseas debt.

Ghana’s credit score was downgraded which reduced the country’s ability to borrow internationally, essentially putting it on an economic death spiral.

The country’s economic fortunes are not any better now than they were two years ago. Back in December 2024, in what was essentially a crisis meeting, Ghana’s parliament was forced to approve a provisional budget of US$ 4.65 billion to prevent a government shutdown.

Ghana’s economic woes have extended to its energy sector, and regular power outages are now the order of the day.

Corruption

Nana Akuffo-Addo’s presidential campaigns in 2016 were quite the spectacle.

In addition to the cyclical promise of fighting corruption, he promised to build factories in each of Ghana’s 261 districts, make high school education free for all, and to reintroduce public employee allowances that had been scrapped by Mahama’s government.

In retrospect, Addo’s campaign promises were overhyped, impractical and unattainable given the country’s economic troubles.

When the unrealistic promises didn’t seem to materialize, the government promised economic miracles. Addo’s vice president Dr. Bawumia (a renowned economist in his own right) was touted as an economic wizard who would make all of Ghana’s problems go away.

Upon his subsequent election in 2016, Addo went on a spree of ‘rewarding’ the political allies that supported his presidential bids in 2008 and 2012. He appointed close friends, family members and tribesmen to important government positions and fulfil government tenders.

Addo had appointed 120 ministers to his government at the start of his tenure in 2016, which strained the government spending on wages.

Addo castigated Mahama’s government for ‘governing with the help’ of international aid and had promised to transform Ghana’s economy into becoming self-sufficient. By the time his tenure came to an end in 2024, Addo’s government had ended up seeking multiple loans and bailouts from the IMF and other local and international credit facilities.

Addo’s government continued to spend heavily throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, especially since 2020 was another election year in Ghana’s electoral calendar. Addo is especially infamous for initiating inflated infrastructural problems such as the US $400 million National Cathedral of Ghana.

Read More: How Campaign Promises Crashed Ghana’s Economy

Perceived corruption is quite high in Ghana, especially in recent years. Despite being recognized as a strong African democracy globally, only 51% of Ghanaians are satisfied with the state of the country’s democracy today, down from 74% in 2012. A study done by Africa Barometer also found that 94.2% of Ghanaians think that at least ‘some’ of the president and his staff are corrupt. 91% of Ghanaians also think that some if not all of the country’s judiciary is corrupt.

The judiciary has a particularly bad reputation as the brainchild of corruption in the country. The Supreme Court seems to act at the behest of the executive and the presidency.

Most Ghanaians lack confidence in the government, something which manifests in voter apathy among the youth who form the majority of Ghana’s population. In fact, voter turnout for 2024’s general election stood at 60.9%, the lowest it has been since the 2000 election.

Ghana’s story is one of a skewed and misunderstood reality. It is a story of a country that is so close yet so far from being a democracy.

Being a democracy is not just about having well-run elections. It is also about good governance and uplifting the economic standards of the population.

Much like the United States, the bipartisan nature of Ghana’s politics has the country living in the illusion of democracy. Power and control have been centralized around a clique of politicians allied to either party. These politicians then share their power with the oligarchs, family members and tribesmen who empower and support them.

If you think about it, Ghana’s ‘democratic system’ is not so different from other ‘democratic countries’ in the continent. Nevertheless, its electoral processes and institutions offer a sliver of hope in building a country that is better for all.

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