Published 15 Jan 09

Strategic Interests

by J. Peter Pham, Ph.D.
World Defense Review columnist

Ghana Again Blazes the Trail for Africa

Having concluded 2008 by examining the military takeover in Guinea and begun 2009 by focusing attention on the most significant conflicts or other flashpoints which will dominate the incoming Obama administration's Africa agenda, it would be churlish of me to fail to dedicate at least one column to an event which constitutes a landmark positive development for the entire continent, the recent democratic elections and peaceful transition in Ghana. Fifty-two years ago, the world witnessed the rebirth of the British crown colony of the Gold Coast as the newly independent state of Ghana, the firstborn of what would soon be a veritable wave of nearly four dozen African nations which would achieve their political independence in the space of a few years. It can only be hoped the last week's inauguration of opposition leader John Atta-Mills as president of Ghana will likewise ushers in a new era in Africa's political history.

Things looked dicey up until the last moment. The second and, according to the democratic constitution adopted in 1993, final term of office for Ghana's incumbent president, John Agyekum Kufuor, was set to expire on January 7, 2009. Under Kufuor's steady leadership which, in turn, built on the foundations laid by his predecessor, Jerry Rawlings, during the latter's final two terms of as the country's elected chief executive (Rawlings had previously seized power by military coup d'état in 1979 and 1981), Ghana reversed the dire straits it found itself plunged into following independence. Sound macroeconomic policy combined with high prices for gold and cocoa – the two commodities alone brought in $2.8 billion in 2007 – have delivered a consistently strong growth rate averaging 6 percent over the last decade and a half, in the process reducing the proportion of the population living in poverty from 52 percent in 1991 to 29 percent in 2006. Thus Ghana is poised to vault into the ranks of middle income countries once production begins next year on the country's hitherto untapped 3 billion barrel petroleum offshore reserve. Moreover, according to Freedom House, Ghanaians live in the second freest country in Africa (the tiny island republic of Cape Verde beats it by a fraction in the 2008 edition of the authoritative Freedom in the World report). With these accomplishments, the stakes in the elections were significant.

When Ghanaians went to the polls to choose Kufuor's successor on December 7, however, they were deadlocked. The clear front runners in the pool of eight candidates were former attorney-general and foreign minister Nana Akufo-Addo of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and former vice president John Atta-Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Akufo-Addo won 49.13 percent of the vote, while Atta-Mills took 47.92 percent. Because neither candidate won an absolute majority of the electors, the race was forced into a second round. Worrisome to many analysts were indicators which pointed to an ethnic pattern to the electoral results: the NPP scored well in constituencies dominated by the Ashanti and other Akan peoples, while the NDC held an overwhelming lock on the Ewe-inhabited Volta region.

The presidential run-off took place on December 28 in 229 of Ghana's 230 constituencies. The results gave the NDC standard-bearer a slight edge with 50.13 percent of the vote to the NPP candidate's 49.87, with just 23,000 votes separating the two men. As I noted in a commentary for The National Interest online two weeks ago, "in a real-life dilemma reminiscent of the one posed to Bud Johnson, the character played by Kevin Costner in last summer's Swing Vote, the outcome of the election now rides on the 53,000 voters in the tiny remote district of Tain, who were unable to vote because an insufficient number of ballots had been shipped to their polling places ahead of the December 28 poll." Tain's voters cast their ballots on January 2. With those last returns recorded, the final margins were still razor-thin: Atta-Mills beat Akufo-Addo by just 40,586 votes out of the total of 9,094,364 ballots cast.

The losing party's apparatchiks, having failed to get the courts to delay the vote, filed a series of legal challenges to its validity. Tensions were high in the capital of Accra. For a brief moment, many voiced fears that Ghana might be on the verge of following the path of Kenya, another pivotal African country where, just one year earlier, a hotly contested election led to a veritable orgy of violence that shook the very foundations of the state.

But then Ghanaians chose a different course. Despite the extremely short period of not even five days between the closing of the last polling places in Tain and the scheduled swearing in of the new president, the transition occurred without a hitch. President Kufuor urged his countrymen to rally behind their new president and his successor appealed to national pride in his call for unity. The former even invited the latter to visit Golden Jubilee House, the new presidential office and residence in Accra built to replace the colonial governor's quarters at Osu Castle. While such a courtesy call may be routine in many countries, it is hardly commonplace in Africa, where many a current head of state literally shot his way into the presidential compound. In contrast, in Ghana, the transition went properly with the control of state assets formally transferred by the outgoing president's chief of staff to the new chief executive's transition team.

So why did things work out in Accra? Who deserves the credit for Ghana, in the words of the official statement from the U.S. State Department, proving that it "has truly taken its place among the community of democracies"? What lessons might this episode hold for efforts to promote good government and stability in Africa?

Exactly one year ago, at the time of Kenya's post-election crisis, I wrote in this column space:

The lesson of Kenya's post-election impasse is that democracy is more than merely counting heads periodically. No less a figure than James Madison noted in the tenth paper of The Federalist, "such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." Instead the democratic ideal that ought to be proposed to Kenya and other African countries should include not only by representation, whereby those governing are chosen by the people in periodic free, fair, and transparent elections, but also constitutionalism, which provides for a government based on the rule of law whose power is circumscribed to prevent the abuse of the fundamental rights and liberties of individuals by the majority or plurality of their fellow citizens. Only when the cost of being out of power is lowered below that of political violence to achieve it will African countries know the security and stability without which the prospects for their future – and America's national interests in an increasingly significant geopolitical space – will be quite bleak.

Ghana's post-election experience underscores the correctness of this counsel. The fact was that the rule of law was respected in Ghana: even the challenges to the election result, subsequently withdrawn by Nana Akufo-Addo, were made under legal principles before properly constituted courts. Moreover, in Ghana there was no question of winner take all. In the legislative poll held the same day as the first round of the presidential vote, the NDC finished one seat short of a parliamentary majority, winning 114 seats to the NPP's 108, with members of two other parties and independents taking the other seven other seats. Thus not only was the losing presidential candidate conciliatory in his concession, but the winner was magnanimous in his victory, declaring "there is only one Ghana" and pledging himself to be "president to all Ghanaians." As a matter of record, Ghana became the first African country where a democratically elected leader belonging to one political party makes way for a democratically elected successor from an opposition party two times in a row. Thus there is now a record that would justify the hope of one day's losers to democratically returning to power on another day. The executive of director of the Danquah Institute, which is aligned with the NPP, told a popular morning radio show this week that the former ruling party would "will offer constructive criticism, and support to the government because we believe in Ghana and we all want to make sure that a better Ghana is seen under the watch of Professor Mills."

As for the credit for the apparently felicitous conclusion to the election, there is enough to go around. First, as State Department spokesman Sean McCormack correctly noted, Ghana's voters have to be commended for "their resolve and deep commitment to the democratic process demonstrated in their participation in their nation's presidential and parliamentary elections." The voter turnout, 69.5 percent in the first round and 72.9 percent in the second round, bested that in the U.S. presidential elections in November by almost 10 points. Second, the institutions responsible for the conduct of the polls and the resolution of disputes, respectively, the Electoral Commission and the judiciary, performed their duties with professionalism, quite contrary to the debacle I witnessed two years ago in Nigeria as that country's ill-named Independent National Electoral Commission made a mockery of the exercise. Third, Ghana's political leaders, including President Kufuor and the two candidates, were statesmanlike in their response the final results. Kufuor has assured his legacy, while Atta-Mills, in his speech to his supporters, began constructing his by emphasizing that "the elections are over. There is no longer an NDC Ghana, an NPP Ghana or a [Convention People's Party] Ghana. We have one Ghana and must work together to build the country"; for his part, Akufo-Addo told his backers that "this is a divided country and these times call for leadership from all of us so that we can continue to build this country." It should be added that both Atta-Mills and Akufo-Addo deserve considerable credit for running campaigns which articulated policy positions on a variety of issues. Irrespective of how the individual voter made his or her choice in the polling booth, the fact that substantive issues were raised is a noteworthy departure from the sadly all-too-usual African political campaign of consisting of "big men" appealing to ethnic solidarity. Fourth, Ghana also benefited from the behind the scenes work of a number of friends and international partners who, during the most critical part of the final phase, kept a vigilant eye on the proceedings and helped calm intemperance on both sides of the political divide. Ghana's most distinguished native son, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, returned home on the eve of the finale to play a discrete, but important, mediating role behind the scenes.

Finally, as to what lessons can be learned, there is something to be said about the benefits of relations well managed. The Bush administration, as I noted in this column last year, will leave a legacy of unprecedented engagement with Africa. Ghana has been a beneficiary of this policy, receiving in addition to other aid a five-year, $547 million grant from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which links assistance to demonstrated commitment to reform. The U.S. Department of Defense has also actively built ties with the Ghanaian armed services. Among other recent security engagements, as I reported here several months, there were two visits during 2008 by U.S. Navy and Coast Guard vessels assigned to the Africa Partnership Station (APS), a part of Navy's "Global Fleet Station" initiative which is designed to provide a platform with the capacity and persistent presence to support training and other partnership efforts in parts of the world where access and sustainment have historically been challenging. Ghana is also the beneficiary of a modest amount of security assistance in the 2009 U.S. budget: some $300,000 for foreign military sales financing (FMF) and $600,000 for international military education and training (IMET). Whether or not more can be done in the current challenging fiscal environment, the West African country is certainly deserving of the assistance it does receive given its impressive track record to date. And it is not just a question of handouts, but also of the favorable investment which the country has carefully fostered in recent years.

All of this is not to say that President Atta-Mills does not have his work cut out for him. Not only will he have to work to bring the sharply divided electors of his country together (to this end, having a closely divided parliament may prove a blessing in disguise), but, over the course of his four-year term of office, he will have to be careful in his fiscal policymaking lest Ghana's newfound oil wealth turn into the "resource curse" that has afflicted all-too-many of Africa's resource-rich countries. More immediately, he will have to concentrate on taming the country's annual inflation rate, which the Ghana Statistical Service estimates to have run up to 18.1 percent in December. However, at least for the moment, he and the nation he leads deserve to be able to glory in the fact that just as Ghana was the herald of African independence, it might also now be the vanguard of that freedom consolidated and prudently exercised.

— J. Peter Pham is Director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., as well as Vice President of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). In addition to the study of terrorism and political violence, his research interests lie at the intersection of international relations, international law, political theory, and ethics, with particular concentrations on the implications for United States foreign policy and African states as well as religion and global politics.

Dr. Pham is the author of over two hundred essays and reviews on a wide variety of subjects in scholarly and opinion journals on both sides of the Atlantic and the author, editor, or translator of over a dozen books. Among his recent publications are Liberia: Portrait of a Failed State (Reed Press, 2004), which has been critically acclaimed by Foreign Affairs, Worldview, Wilson Quarterly, American Foreign Policy Interests, and other scholarly publications, and Child Soldiers, Adult Interests: The Global Dimensions of the Sierra Leonean Tragedy (Nova Science Publishers, 2005).

In addition to serving on the boards of several international and national think tanks and journals, Dr. Pham has testified before the U.S. Congress and conducted briefings or consulted for both Congressional and Executive agencies. He is also a frequent contributor to National Review Online's military blog, The Tank.

© 2009 J. Peter Pham

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