Wednesday, March 21, 2012
In seeking better means to govern ourselves, we have made sacrifices to be where we are today. The euphoria that characterized the transitioning to this constitutional democratic stage following the inception of the 4th Republic—and all the attendant hot air and pageantry surrounding it—has dissipated, and we can now claim to have made some progress in our political development.
But our major national problems are still with us, 20 years into this democratic experiment, despite the over-abundance of natural and human resources, which raises pithy questions about the calibre of our leaders and what we hope to use our democracy to achieve.
We are now faced with the inescapable intricacies of that transition and must put behind us all that we did hitherto. Having successfully transitioned to a new level, we have reached the point where our democracy needs consolidation. We can’t consolidate it with the tools that we used for the transitional phase.
But that’s not the case. Everyday happenings indicate that we are still operating in the mode of transition, using the same tools and approaches to tackle the challenges of a new phase. It’s a major problem.
At this point when we must consolidate our democracy, we need tools that will be appropriate for the tasks at hand. If we still hang on to those that enabled the transition, we will get stuck and risk relapsing into the negative habits that characterized the pre-4th Republican era.
In an earlier opinion piece condemning the Mills government’s boycott of the Multi-Media News Group, I hazarded the claim that the government made a terrible mistake by equating itself to the NDC and acting on its behalf. I said aboveboard that the government is not the same as the political party that put it in office and should behave responsibly to help us grow our democracy. I haven’t changed my mind.
In order to consolidate our democracy, we must tackle its inherent flaws. One such flaw is the conflation of the government and the political party that put it in power into one entity. We must separate both to chart a new path that will allow the government in power to function responsibly without being bogged down by the peculiar interests of the political party on whose crest it rode into existence.
That may be too difficult for some to conceive or perceive; but it is a reality to be admitted and confronted. It is workable and should be done to help us solve one of the major problems that have made it difficult for us to operate the kind of democracy that will address our peculiar national needs.
We want to have a democracy that will go beyond the periodic ritual of voting, a mere ruse to fool the people that by so doing, they will be empowered—and that our democracy is working properly. We can’t consolidate our democracy that way.
The Mills government is not the same as the NDC, a political party, even though the government is in existence because it was enabled by the NDC’s victory at the 2008 elections. In the same way, neither should the Kufuor government be levelled down as an integral part of the NPP (its political base).
Even though the President and his government functionaries defer to the party as the source of their political succour, they are not expected to equate the government to the party. The party may be the bastion to feed the government with functionaries but it is not to be confused with the government.
Those functionaries are in office as a government, empowered to be so by the electorate when their party won the elections. That is what getting the mandate to rule entails. It means that the government is instituted as an entity to rule the country and not as an extension of a political party to manage affairs in a partisan manner to create tension in the country.
Unfortunately, that is what we have noticed in our kind of democracy. It isn’t so in others. The United States’ constitutional democratic system (which our own is fashioned on at the level of the Executive Presidency), for instance, doesn’t yoke the Democratic Party or the Republican Party to the government in force.
How many times have we ever heard that ordinary party members in the US have locked horns with the President or that the party’s leaders have written letters to the President twisting his arms to act on their command? It doesn’t happen and won’t happen because the democracy separates the government from the political party that puts it in office.
It is not difficult for such a democracy to accommodate such provisions and for the people to work hard to adhere to them, upholding and guarding them against encroachment or corruption. That is why that democracy has stood the test of time.
Ours isn’t yet at that point because we are confused and don’t have the political will to let our “Yes” be “Yes” and our “No” be “No.”
By conflating the political party with the government, we put impediments on our own way to progress and can’t even take the first step to free ourselves from these self-created worries.
I don’t see the “intellectual” element in the way the government handles issues that could otherwise be turned about in its own interest. It doesn’t make sense for the government to lump things together, yoke itself with the NDC (as a distinct political party outside the confines of government) to take this desperate action.
The government needs to know the clear lines of demarcation between it and the political party that supplies it with human resources to constitute the entity called “government.” The lines of demarcation are clear but being blurred for misplaced political expediency.
Who in his proper frame of mind won’t point to the NDC and its structures as a political entity that is isolable from the Executive that occupies the Osu Castle at the national level and appoints representatives to administer affairs at the lower levels? Of course, we know that structurally, we are operating a three-tier political arrangement—national, regional, and metropolitan/municipal/district Assemblies levels.
Although these government functionaries and others in the Legislature or analogous institutions performing functions that have a direct bearing on governance may be active members of the political party that won the general elections (with particular reference to the Presidential one), it doesn’t mean that the government so formed must necessarily regard itself as an extension of that political party.
It is clear that a kind of symbiotic relationship exists and that the party is the livewire of the government, which may be mistaken interpreted that under our democracy, without the party to win the elections, there can’t be the government.
Separating the government and its interests from that of the party has been a major problem in this country. That is why it is easy for members of the party to jolt the government with their tantrums and persistent clamouring for attention short of which they either resort to blackmail or empty threats to work against the government at election time.
We have been witnessing the rumpus going on in the NDC and how it rubs off on the government all because those in authority can’t be bold enough to let the government do things the way a government should and the NDC take care of itself as a political party.
The Mills government particularly is entangled in this net because of this tendency to collapse the government’s interest into that of the party and to behave as if they are not exclusive of each other. It is for this reason that some government functionaries mistake their role as both doing government business and promoting the well-being of the NDC simultaneously.
For as long as this trend persists, the government can’t free itself from the tentacles of those in the NDC working hard against it just because of petty differences bordering on parochial personal quests.
As a political party, the NDC has partisan interests. It exists to work for itself so that it can remain viable. On the other hand, as a government, the Mills administration or any other that succeeds it, is enjoined to work for the national good, devoid of partisan party biases and prejudices. That is why President Mills’ claim of being a “Father-for-all-Ghanaians” fits properly into the perception of government, even if he isn’t practically implementing that slogan for all Ghanaians to feel the impact.
What I am hitting at is simple: the government is harming itself with all this fixation on the NDC and doing things in a partisan way, which is the main flaw that irritates those of us who wish things would be done differently.
Although the government’s fate depends on that of the party to remain what it is, there is every reason to suggest a break. Genuine efforts must begin to be made to insulate the government against the party’s incursions into its domain or to divorce the government’s interests from those of the party.
Ghanaians need to see this separation as an imperative if our democracy is to mature. It behooves the leadership of the NDC (and any other which wins future elections) to support the move to uphold the party as it is and to distance it from the government as much as will enable the government to exist and function for the benefit of the entire country.
Of course, as human institutions, we can’t rule out lapses or the irresistible tendency on the part of some to blur the line and exploit the situation. But we must be firm to enforce measures that will prevent the political parties from equating themselves to the government or for the government being forced into a subservient position to obey the party’s dictates.
If we can do so successfully, we will be strengthening our democracy. It is only then that we will be smoothing the rough edges to make our democracy more manageable and productive.
As the situation currently is, our political parties aren’t properly fashioned to exist on their own without tapping into the huge resources that the governments they form have access to. Under Rawlings, we saw how the NDC benefited from his incumbency to the disadvantage of the rival parties. Under Kufuor, the NPP did same.
It is under President Mills that the problem has reared its ugly head because of the friction between a cross-section of the NDC and the government. It is obvious that those locking horns with President Mills have placed too much faith in the dialectics and expected too much from the government all too soon. Not getting their wishes satisfied, they are up in arms.
Now that we know the extent to which this rivalry between the government and the party that put it in power can do to harm our interests, we must not brush the problem under the rug. Let’s confront it head-on to tackle.
The political party exists to supply human resources to run the government of the day if it wins voter confidence at the polls. At that point, the party would have achieved its objective and should then concentrate on itself while its members who constitute the government also concentrate their efforts on governance issues for the benefit of the Ghanaian populace without being negatively influenced to sideline others just because of party affiliations. It doesn’t mean those government functionaries can’t serve their parties in any way. They can do so without negating government business.
It is a difficult step to take but it must be taken if we are to avoid the negative developments threatening to doom the Mills government. And it will be the same for future governments too. Let’s be careful.
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