Potential For Instability In Ghana - Boakye Djan
Ghana’s political party democracy is irrational and needs a revolution of ideas to address the potential for instability that it could create for the country, the Head of Government of the erstwhile Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), Osahene Boakye Djan, has said.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Graphic, he made a dire prognosis of a country stumbling gradually into a state where majority participation in political party practice remained a myth.
Advertisement
Osahene made this statement after a long period of silence, during which the AFRC member, who doubled as the spokesman, took respite from public political activity and discourse.
His views, he said, were based on a careful observation of developments of recent primaries of the country’s political parties and their implications for the political health of the country.
Explaining what he meant by an irrational political system, he said this was where political choices were limited to persuasion and enticement of voters with money, ethnic and religious sentiments, gender, age and personality attacks as well as other inducements that had been a characteristic of all the recent primaries of the major political parties in the country.
Buttressing that point, he said in settled democracies, political choices were restricted to issues, policies and principles that directly translated into future benefits to voters who were then expected to make informed decisions on them.
He said in the United Kingdom, the longest known multi-party democracy in the world, formal and rational systems of political negotiations based on rational decisions and choices from formal issues and policies offered by competing politicians within or outside political parties were in place, which allowed for informed choices by voters.
The Labour Party on the broad left, the Liberal Democrats in the broad centre and the Conservative Party on the broad right are all occupying three distinctive boundaries and presenting three distinctive choices.
In Ghana, where do the four major political parties with representation in Parliament fit into this pattern? He asked.
Osahene identified the non-clarity in this area as the root cause of the problems of political party practice in Ghana today and most parts of Africa, evidenced by the electoral challenges currently in Kenya and South Africa.
Osahene said the “money persuasion” that had become a part of the Ghanaian political system was deeply offensive and dangerous for the future of democracy in the country.
“It is the basis of the corrosive corruption in the country today. Why would someone want to accept money from a politician in exchange for a vote? Practical competitive politics, as far as I am concerned, is the calculation, the estimate or the judgement of the future for the benefit of all of us and not for a monetary gain today.
The man is supposed to go into a four-year term of office to create a condition to benefit you and me in the future and not today,” he pointed out.
He was of the view that politicians had been manipulating the situation to their own advantage.
To those aspiring for political leadership and the presidential slot, he stressed that “politics is not about paying someone upfront to get you into power for you to make money for yourself and your family,” while warning the electorate that “accepting cash to vote for a politician is a short-term palliative and not a long-term solution; for if you go to the market and finish spending it, you may have to wait for another four years for another handout.
That is not the practical politics that is meant to provide a long-term solution for you and your standard of life”.