Ghana Votes

Ghana votes this Sunday. A conversation I had with a taxi driver the other day encapsulated a lot of the themes that I’ve been hearing about the election since I’ve arrived. He told me that he would vote for the National Democratic Congress (NDC, opposition) candidate, John Atta Mills. When I asked him why, he told me that he had voted for the current president, John Kufuor, of the National Patriotic Party (NPP) during the last two elections in 2000 and 2004. He felt like the economy was in decline (GDP growth has been modestly positive on the back of favorable cocoa and gold prices), and what’s worse, that the NPP had made promises that it could never have hoped to have kept, especially reducing the price of oil and food. He also expressed general disillusionment with “African politicians.” For those reasons, he was voting for change, which in this case means voting for the candidate who served as vice president for the previous president.

I don’t see anything unusual in this rationale. Voting for personalities instead of issues and on your own personal economic situation rather than economy as a whole are logical approaches to vote casting in Albany just as much as in Accra. The desire for better political leadership is universal as well, though poor leadership and poor governance are seen as a fundamental hindrance to the realization of Africans’ ambitions and more of a matter of casual complaint in the U.S. (although there are notable exceptions, the response to Katrina comes to mind).

So not unlike the US elections, the coming vote in Ghana is in many ways a referendum on the last 8 years. The current New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration took over in 2000 from the National Democratic Congress (NDC), which had ruled for the previous 8 years with Jerry Rawlings at its helm. Rawlings had ruled autocratically for the nine years prior to the 1992 elections after being installed (for the second time) by a coup. Rawlings made Ghana the darling of the IMF, steering the country through what was widely regarded as a model structural adjustment program. Deficits were reduced and the civil service scaled back, but inflation and lackadaisical growth continued to dog the economy. In 1992, as pressures for democracy mounted across the continent, Rawlings and the NDC consented to submit their mandate to a vote, but a flush of pre-election spending (which resulted in a return to the government deficits that the SAP had pruned) and other political maneuvering meant that the opposition had little chance to gain a real foothold. Rawlings peacefully handed over power in 2000 to now president John Kufuor.

Many Ghanaians have told me - and my observations have not disproved it – that Ghanaians tend to vote for personalities rather than positions. I’ve been a bit hard-pressed to separate the candidates on the issues, though the NDC nominally sits a bit to the left and NPP a bit to the right. The NPP candidate, British-trained lawyer, son of a former president, and himself a former foreign minister Nana Akufo-Addo, is running under the slogan “We are moving forward,” to which NDC supporters continually respond, “Forward to where?” The NDC candidate is John Atta Mills, “A Better Man for a Better Ghana.” Atta Mills is a former professor of law at none other than my own institution, and, as already mentioned, he served as vice president under Rawlings.

By all accounts (except the state run newspaper which has Akufo-Addo polling 15 points ahead), the election is too close to call. Lest you doubt me, the BBC magazine Focus on Africa cover story on the Ghanaian elections was titled “Ghana Elections: Too Close to Call.” Everyone is hoping for a peaceful election. There were some problems with voter registration (not enough materials, allegations of foreigners and minors being registered) which led to its extension. There have also been some violent encounters between partisans; however, prospects for an election without major incident seem high. The Focus on Africa article claimed that no one would be so confident in their predictions though after Kenya, but the situation is really much less tense here. Kufuor is stepping down regardless, and the country has already had one power transition. Nevertheless, this is an important election for the consolidation of democracy in Ghana.