I often argue two things about partisanship.
First, it is inevitable in a multi-party democracy.
Some citizens will become affiliated with political parties and develop very strong attachments to them.
Second, partisanship is not a bad thing.
I enjoy debates where partisans “fight” over policy and programme ideas on how best to move the country’s development needle forward.
The point of the above is to immediately disabuse the erroneous notion that those who eschew the kind of partisanship some citizens serve in the political space are anti-partisan.
Far from that.
However, various developments come with partisanship that must give us pause.
One such development which is growing and being amplified is political labelling.
Here is my reflection on the subject.
Political labelling
We have two dominant political parties – the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
There are those who publicly wear their partisan attachment on their sleeves.
There are those who do not. And there are those who, although active citizens, avoid partisan attachments.
After all, Afrobarometer has clearly shown that only 49 per cent of Ghanaians in the most recent survey (Round 10, 2024) express feeling close to any political party.
That is the beauty of democracy.
But as our democracy grows, it appears that the default lines of public discourse and the rhetoric of active citizens are filtered through a binary lens – NPP or NDC.
And those lenses are designed to produce a binary interpretation – pro or anti a particular political party.
And finally, when the judgment call is made as to whether an activated citizen voice is pro or anti to a fellow citizen’s preferred party, then comes the response.
If pro, it is greeted with a warm embrace.
If anti, it is greeted with hostility, with the kind of rhetoric that sometimes makes you cringe.
Two things trouble me about political labelling.
First, in my opinion, is the path of least resistance when engaging fellow citizens in the public space, keeping in mind that labels come with stereotypes.
Let me use my personal experience to illustrate this point.
I recall years ago holding a conservative position on a social issue in America.
A friend, who held an alternative view, engaged me in a debate.
After explaining her position, I simply retorted: “You are such a liberal.” My response freed me of the responsibility of engaging her in the substance of her arguments and appreciating the nuances of how she arrived at her position, which was different from mine.
The same is true when applied in our NDC-NPP binary context of weighing the voices of active citizens.
Purveyors
Second is its transient nature whenever I observe it happen. An active citizen can be labelled Pro Party A one day and Anti Party A the next minute.
Under such circumstances, it creates the impression that political labelling is driven by whether a partisan feels an active citizen’s voice provides positive or negative political dividends to their preferred party.
When the political dividends are deemed negative, then come the efforts to what I consider, in my opinion, delegitimisation.
But what the purveyors of political labelling overlook is that the very active citizen voices they seek to delegitimise so easily are the very voices they once embraced or are likely to do so in the future.
I recently had a “friendly fire” with a good friend who is a true partisan over this issue.
I understood his concern that he wanted to see consistency in the voices of active citizens.
I appreciated the fact that he also understood my concern that the voices you delegitimise cannot be the same voices you hope would be activated because of their potential positive political dividends to your party.
Any solutions
I have been the victim of vicious political labelling in the past. It is the reason I stay out of the crosshairs of partisans.
But in the medium to long term, though, the response to labelling cannot be disbarment from the public square.
I feel that to continue to build a strong and healthy democracy, the public square must reflect the divergent opinions citizens hold on matters of national interest.
I am, however, at a loss as to how this gets resolved.
Call for more civility in our public discourse? Maybe.
Acknowledge that the political spectrum is broad, which means citizens will congregate at different points on it? Perhaps.
“Should We Consent to Be Governed?: A Short Introduction to Political Philosophy” by Stephen Nathanson describes four types of citizens – Super Patriot, Anarchist, Cynic and Critical Citizen.
It can be applied to our attachments to political parties and how they shape the way we treat each other.
Perhaps we can read and gather in the public square to share our thoughts?
The writer is the Project Director, Democracy Project.
