Remembering the 2016 Elections
The following are the contemporaneous notes that I made during the 2016 elections in Ghana:
I marvel at how surreal the electoral campaign of 2016 is turning out to be. As a young television technician remarked to me when I enquired what his friends felt about the election: “there is no vim” in the elections. But is this good or bad for the incumbent party?
The campaigns of the political parties seem to be very spirited. However, in my part of Ghana, ordinary people feel that this election is not about them! I am only an observer in these (2016) elections. However, as a 20-year veteran as an active participant in Ghanaian elections, I cannot help but ask with astonishment: “was it always like this”?
The ruling government (the NDC) is running the most vigorous campaign in my area. The party’s paraphernalia and posters are everywhere. The main platform of the NDC revolves around the impressive social and economic infrastructure that the party has realized, initiated, or planned for the region and the country. It would be a mistake, therefore, not to give the party another mandate to continue, according to the NDC.
Indeed the President is scheduled to come to the Central Region within days to inaugurate the Elmina Bridge and the Cape Coast Kotokoraba market. This is at the heels of the recent inauguration of the Cape Coast Stadium and the Komenda Sugar factory. The airwaves are also full of rumours of generous distribution of goodies and promises of better things to come. But why are the people so singularly unimpressed?
The opposition counters that the government’s achievements are not nearly as impressive as they are hyped to be. Moreover, according to the opposition, the government’s achievements have: been realised at huge costs, led to heavy indebtedness, and been managed with gross incompetence. Moreover, the contracts for projects have been grossly inflated due to corruption.
Still, according to the opposition, the incompetence of the government extends to the management of the macro economy and the critical energy sector. The main opposition party points to a better record in providing social and economic infrastructure as well as managing the economy. Moreover the opposition has a vision for Ghana while the ruling party is visionless.
In my area (K.E.E.A) the ruling party has not been the only one alleged to be distributing goodies to the electorate. Indeed a smaller opposition party appears to be beating the ruling party in the distribution of largesse and the making of promises.
With all this frenetic activity, “compelling” arguments, “evidence-based” rolling out of accomplishments, and presentations of rival visions and projects for Ghana (including “one district one factory”, “one village one dam” “free” SHS, etc,) why the apathy? We offer the following hypothesis:
The passions of a people are aroused only when they feel that those who aspire to lead them understand their objective conditions, empathise with their difficulties, and appear to have an idea on how to address these challenges.
The Disconnect Between Campaign Messages and Voters’ Concerns
We do not wish to argue that Ghanaians are indifferent to promises of good and extensive social and economic infrastructure, competent and incorruptible leadership, well functioning institutions (parliament, judiciary, law enforcement, and civil service etc). At this particular political juncture, however, we detect that these considerations are minor to most Ghanaian voters and, in any case, the voters are distrustful of promises.
The voters appear preoccupied by the difficulties that they encounter in their daily lives and in making ends meet. The elections, the rallies, the jingles and the very catchy tunes, the bantering, and sloganeering are only fleeting distractions. At the end of the day, however, voters have no credible basis for choosing one political party over another. As a result, the dominant feeling is that Ghanaian elections don’t fundamentally change anything. A Graffiti artist expressed it much better:
The politicians reinforce the perception that elections don’t matter by blaming their spectacular failures (“dumsor”, not funding NHIS, GETFUND, and other statutory funds, etc.) on “forces beyond our control”. Among the many that the ruling government could and did point to were: collapse of oil prices, shortfalls in revenue collections, disruptions in the supply of fuel due to governments inability to pay for fuel, and the high costs of negotiated electricity supply contracts under private public partnerships (PPP).
The Voter is Always Right
Voters rightly perceive that the economic managers (irrespective of political party) only tinker at the margins and don’t make a difference. The reason is obvious: Ghana is a country prone to intermittent crises (debt, fiscal, commodity price, balance of payments, etc.). It is a very open economy and the Ghanaian economy currently suffers under the tyranny of variations in commodity prices interests rates, and the value of the U.S. dollar.
But other countries have been in similar conditions and have managed successful transitions towards economic resilience and improved the efficiency of domestic production. There are no mysteries on how these countries managed the transition: they pursued determined policies of (efficiently) investing in productive infrastructure to make their economies more competitive and to expand the production possibility frontiers.
The productive infrastructure basically involve Transport, Energy/Electricity, Communications, and the harnessing Water resources for production and consumption. Ghana is seriously lagging behind but “Ghanaian politicians” feel no pressure to implement policies to bridge the gap. We offer the following reasons.
The economy is dominated by foreign capital (and not necessarily the most dynamic sector of foreign capital). National private capital occupies a very subordinate position in the economy and is reduced to begging for increased “local content” in production. But should the question not be how much foreign content in production does Ghana need in order to avail itself of the most efficient technologies?
Similarly, national labor has become “disempowered”, incapable of articulating and defending the just demands of the rank and file, including the placing of limits on the importation of foreign labor and the export of jobs to other countries.
Absence of Champions for the Creation of a National Economy
Ghana, therefore, is a country without national champions for the creation of a national economy to meet the needs of the people. In the absence of exigent national champions, economic policy makers in Ghana have been able to get away with policies that simply adapt to emerging global trends. In this, the economic managers swallow line hook and sinker prescriptions of international financial institutions on how best to “adjust” to or finance (temporary) dislocations caused by globalisation. It is a strategy of keeping an anchored ship on an even keel (static equilibrium) rather than sailing the ship full speed ahead while minimising turbulence.
Politics Should Matter and More so in Ghana!
Ghana is a country where a few individuals with access to the state and links to foreign capital have become fabulously rich by exploiting “the rules of the game”. These rules include unlimited individual “Ghanaian” contributions to campaign financing, ability of office holders to accept gifts from “benefactors”, and rigged procurement practices.
But these “rules of the game” are crucial! For starters these rules only pit individual party financiers (and aspiring business interests) against each other. These rules do nothing to advance the interests of the aspiring business moguls as a group of dynamic efficient indigenous producers. The rules favour cronyism and the very short-term perspective as the fortunes of aspiring entrepreneurs vary dramatically with the political alternation of power between the NDC and NPP.
These are dysfunctions of the current political economic dispensation. The rules of the game are crying for reform. But the reform agenda was totally ignored by the elections of 2016 and probably all the others before them. Why then should the elections make a difference and why should the voters care?
