Affirmative babes, a delivery ghetto and Kofi B
In 1918, a Representative of the People Act was passed in the United Kingdom (UK) to allow women to vote for the first time. However, the act permitted only those aged 30 and above and owning property to vote. Yet all men aged 21 and above, and those aged 19 and above in the armed forces, were allowed to vote whether they owned a property or not.
No further improvement was made in women’s voting rights until the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 that allowed men and women aged 21 and above to vote.
Things have changed since then, yet women representation still lags behind men. In 1992, there were only 60 (9.2 per cent) out of the 571 members of parliament (MPs), with the number increasing to 148 (22 per cent) out of 650 in 2010. The numbers have been fluctuating since 1929.
UK political parties have since 1928 applied various strategies to increase female representation in Parliament, including providing special training for potential candidates and the adoption of “all women shortlists (AWS)” as an affirmative action making it compulsory for selected constituencies to select only women candidates. This strategy was criticised as undemocratic, sacrificing competition and merit, and being a discrimination against men.
The Labour Party embraced this strategy and in the 1992 elections ensured that there was at least one female candidate on each shortlist from the party’s very safe seats, yet only a handful of women were able to become MPs.
Blair Babes
The party affirmed the policy in its 1993 conference and followed in 1996 by resolving to put women candidates in selected safe seats aimed at getting 100 female MPs in the 1997 parliament, and targeting 50 per cent female MPs in the next 10 years. This paid off and gave Labour a landslide victory and 101 female MPs, making the media tag them as ‘Blair Babes’, because Tony Blair was the party leader who championed the AWS policy.
Labour’s achievement in implementing the AWS policy was not without controversies. Some constituencies, including Croydon Central, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, Bishop Auckland, and Slough rebelled against the party.
Peter Jepson and Roger Dyas-Elliott, who became victims of the policy, challenged the policy in court in December 1995. In January 1996, an industrial tribunal ruled that Labour broke the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975.
Affirmative action or positive discrimination was first used in the United States by President John F. Kennedy on March 6, 1961 to promote non-discrimination in the American society. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson also used it to remove discrimination from government employment. The system has been used in a number of countries to promote equality without receiving much opposition.
In Ghana, free education for people in the three northern regions, introduced in the First Republic and still being implemented, is an affirmative action, same as the ill-fated Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA).
Using discrimination to achieve equality
Positive discrimination is, therefore, not a bad policy since it tries to bring about equality. For this reason, it was never a bad idea that the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) National Executive Council (NEC) last Monday adopted a policy to round-fence the party’s 16 female MPs from being contested by male candidates.
The policy has, however, received hostile responses by members of the party, political analysts, including this author, and political commentators. Reasons for the hostile responses are numerous, first, because of its lack of grassroots consultation and consensus.
During the elections for national executives of the party, none of the people who now want an affirmative action realised the need for fair female representation on the National Executive and the need to reserve half of the positions for women.
I’m sure the woman organiser position would have been contested by men if they had decided.
The timing of the policy was also bad, coming at a time many potential candidates had spent money in their preparation. Unlike Blair and Labour reserving their safe seats for women, the NPP gurus, some of whom have very safe seats, are rather protecting their own seats while they deny other men the chance to be MPs.
Again, the NEC failed to recognise the fact that some of the 16 female MPs have not performed, both in parliament and at the constituency level in terms of party organisation.
The NPP’s attempt to create ‘affirmative babes’ or a feminised culture would have been welcomed by many if it was properly timed and given broad-based consultation.
New coastal map of Accra?
The other contentious aspect of the policy was the very strategic drawing of a new coastal map of Accra, where 12 constituencies were reserved for only Ga indigenes to contest. Are there no indigenous Ga in the other Accra constituencies?
If indigenous Ga needs preferential treatment, what about other ethnic groups? Why not reserve same number of constituencies in all regions for indigenes? What would be the justification when a citizen from Breman Asikuma who lives in Ablekuma South cannot contest elections there whereas a citizen of Ablekuma who lives in Breman Asikuma can contest within the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa Constituency?
The other issue which is yet to receive responses is the filing fees. Sitting NPP MPs are being selfish by imposing additional GH¢20,000 on their contenders. Every sitting MP pays GH¢700 a month and the NEC sees only that as ‘contribution to the party’ without acknowledging that some party members have for all these years done party work for which they would have earned more than GH¢700 a month if they were to take salaries.
The principle must be that once your term ends, you start afresh, just like any other contestant. Being a ‘sitting’ MP must not be used as a protective cover at the expense of potential candidates. The MPs have been honoured by the party, hence contributing GH¢700 monthly must not be seen as better contribution than party members who have kept constituency offices running.
Raising funds
No one doubts the expensive nature of organising primaries and campaigning for elections, but the fairest way is for the party to find another way of raising funds.
By the way, who is in charge of the NPP? Is it the flag bearer, the National Executive or the Director of Communications? How can the Director of Communications, Nana Akomea, tell Ghanaians that the policy ‘adopted’ by the NEC was not binding but optional for those who wanted to implement it? Does he speak for himself or the party? It seems political communication skills are missing somewhere.
Oh, did I hear the President has created a delivery ghetto, sorry unit, headed by Dr Valerie Sawyer? National Democratic Congress (NDC) communication team members are assigning different roles for the unit, but Deputy Communications Minister, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, says the unit will ‘monitor’ the progress of government projects and policies ‘in real time.’
What happens to the various monitoring and evaluation units of the ministries? Was it not the same role assigned Tony Aidoo who later complained publicly that his office had been starved of funds? He was made an ambassador to silence him. How can the President begin to monitor his ministers in the middle of his tenure?
Did I hear well that a group calling itself the NDC Security Caucus of Kumasi has asked President Mahama to remove DCOP Kofi Boakye, the Ashanti Regional Police Commander; his deputy, ACP Ampofo Duku, and ACP Kwaku Boadu Peprah, the Suame Divisional Commander, because the policemen “don’t believe in fairness and in the ideals and values of NDC and the Better Ghana agenda” and that they needed “police commanders who totally believe in the values and ideals of NDC and Better Ghana agenda as election 2016 is approaching.”
Kofi Boakye is not a ‘super policeman’ but arguably he has brought some sanity into policing in Kumasi and the Ashanti Region, and has undoubtedly encouraged his subordinates with his own professional standards and that has led to the apprehension of hardened criminals.
Kofi Boakye and such principled and professional policemen must rather be encouraged to even improve their performance in fighting crime instead of using party interests to frustrate them.
President Mahama must ignore this group. It is time politicians left police officers to do their work professionally for the benefit of us all.
The author is a Political Scientist, and Media and Communication Expert. Writer’s e:mail :fasado@hotmail.com
