Accra, Ghana//-The Executive Director of Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Professor H. Kwasi Prempeh, observed that Ghana’s democracy has been turned against its citizens, making it difficult for the citizens to see and feel the benefit of the country’s more than three decades, of interrupted democracy.
He made this known when he delivered the keynote address at the First Anniversary Public Lecture in honour of the late Akoto Ampaw, a veteran lawyer, activist, and pan-Africanist at the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana, Accra.
Prof Prempeh noted: “Instead of a government of the people by the people for the people, we have ended up with the government of the party by the party for the party and its participants”. So, for him, this kind of practice of democracy could not solve the numerous problems and challenges confronting citizens in the country.
Disappointing
Speaking on the topic: “The Crisis of Civic Citizenship in Contemporary Ghanaian Democracy: Lessons from the Life and Times Late A. Akoto Ampaw”, the country’s strong brand image appears well earned.
“The product, however, is an altogether different story. In terms of the rule of entry and exit, or how and how orderly a country chooses and changes its leaders in government, Ghana indeed scores high marks.
However, once a government is in office, the rules of play—how and how well the country is governed and how public power and resources are used to address public problems, if at all—have remained chronically underwarming and disappointing. “
Prof Prempeh drew on three examples to illustrate this problem. One from the economy; the second example drew from the dysfunctional feature of the constitutional system which is being operated; and the third from a perineal public problem that has defied solution despite successive changes of government.
Economic front
“Ghana is in the final weeks of a crucial election year. This is happening at a time of exceptional economic hardships among the population. The country is amid its first ever sovereign debt default and once again under some form of adult supervision by the IMF”.
The 17 times that the country had to run to the IMF for bailout since independence in 1957 and the sixth time since the country’s return to democratic government in 1992. This historic sovereign debt default has been accompanied by hyperinflation, which reached as high as over 50% two years ago and currently hovers around 25%, as well as haircuts on domestic investment by Ghanaians holding government bonds, according to him.
“But you won’t know any of this if you follow the candidates and their song-and-dance election campaigns across the country. On the campaign trail, we continue to hear promise upon promise of whatever needs to be said to win an election.
But you will not hear the discussion of how to break the stronghold of debt, Eurobond debt or the habit of IMF recidivism in which we are caught. No way out of the economic quagmire, just more pulley from the political parties and their candidates.”
After all, when things get tough, those we elected to run our public affairs and, for that matter, our economy will, especially if a general election is on the horizon, simply turn to external managers that we have never elected and cannot hold to an account to step in again with a bailout and to steer the sinking economic ship back to safe harbour temporally”.
Constitutional system
The constitutional system, Prof Prempeh told participants at the well-attended public lecture that the country and its managers continue to have a persistent colonial era model of local government or local administration characterise by national elite paternalism towards local communities no different from during the colonial era when the colonial authorities represented by the governor dealt with the local communities, the natives so to speak with an air of superiority and maternalism.
“So, 30-something years into democratic rule, our president, a linear decedent of the colonial government, continues to nominate and appoint the mayors, district chief executives of all the administrative districts across the country despite strong popular demand for local governments to elect their chief executives. No supplier has been forthcoming from the national elites at the centre.
A constitutional referendum originally scheduled for late 2019 was called off at the last minute by a presidential fiat because the two parliamentary parties, the sole gatekeepers of constitutional revision of Ghana’s elite-friendly constitution, could not reconcile their rival partisan preferences in the interest of the collective good.
Thus, thanks to persistent elite inertia and unwillingness to reach a consensus on a critical piece of constitutional reform to democratise local government and empower local communities to take charge of their affairs. Our electoral democracy remains Accra centred”.
The third example
The third example of the country’s democracy’s apparent inability to solve critical public problems comes from the story of galamsey or illegal artisanal mining.
Again, despite the scale and gravity of the devastation this widespread practice is causing to the country’s ecology, water supply systems, and long-term public health, resolute action has not been forthcoming from the political classes. And here, they don’t even pretend to conceal their self-serving reasons for not acting resolutely to stop the calamity. If they do, they risk losing votes in the illegal artisan mining communities to their political rivals, he said.
Akoto Ampaw
Prof Prempeh commended Friends of Akoto Ampaw for seeing it fit and proper to organise this first-anniversary public lecture to remember and celebrate the life, work and legacy of their dear friend, brother and compatriot, Citizen Akoto Ampaw, more popularly known as Sheey Sheey, who passed on October 20, 2023.
“He left us all heartbroken. The organisation that I prevailed to lead, Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), was one of the late Ampaw’s closest institutional friends and civil society allies. And we feel greatly honoured to have been invited by the Friends of Akoto Ampaw to partner with them and the Institute of African Affairs of the University of Ghana to this first anniversary public lecture in honour of Akoto Ampaw.”
I believe I ask for my colleagues at CDD-Ghana, including the members of the board, when I say that the Center will be glad and proud to have this idea and this collaboration with Friends of Akoto Ampaw properly institutionalised and made an annual affair going forward, thus giving birth to an annual Akoto Ampaw Memorial Lecture”.
Speaking in a more personal capacity, he said the late Akoto Ampaw was indeed a big brother and a very dear friend. But compared to all the big brothers and big sisters in the group of compatriots that have now constituted themselves into the Friends of Akoto Ampaw, he said he was rather a latecomer in the group.
Having met and come to know and share the company with the late Akoto Ampaw only during the last decade and a half or two decades or so of his life spanning six decades, Prof Prempeh was grateful beyond measure that the late seasoned lawyer path and his did eventually cross and in ways that have been profoundly and enriching for him.
“Like so many of you here today, I do miss Sheey Sheey very greatly, especially at a time such as this when our nation appears ruthless and its nominal representative and other public institutions and the political classes increasingly disconnected from the everyday realities of the people and are unable to inspire confidence about the future.
I knew Akoto Ampaw by reputation for a long time before we met in person, and when we did, we eventually met sometime in the late 2000s, it was through our shared interest in helping others we could think and work through some of the problems and challenges of democracy in Ghana’s 4th Republic”.
He described the late Akoto Apaw as a cosmopolitan citizen of the world that he was and a life-long pan-Africanist whose belief in and commitment to social justice transversed the boundary of race, nationality, ethnicity, gender, and class.
Akoto Ampaw’s worth and work extended beyond the shores of his homeland, Ghana. His activism on behalf of the causes he believed in dates back to the 1970s when he worked tirelessly in the All-Africa Students’ Union. As a man not only of thought but of action, Akoto Ampaw fought globally. But being also a practical man, he acted primarily locally.
Discussants
Prof Dzodzi Tsikata of the Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London, and Sulemana Braimah, Executive Director of Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), said the late Akoto Apaw was a man who contributed greatly to opening the civic space and defended the human rights and freedoms of all.
The Chairperson of the lecture, Professor Kwame Karikari, said they certainly hope the first anniversary of the passing of their late friend and brother, Akoto Ampaw, would stimulate continuous critical discussion and struggles to strive to promote the strengthening of democracy for the development of social, economic, and cultural progress of our country.
