Politics in Ghana

Politics in Ghana

Since the introduction of constitutional democracy in 1992 Ghana has been a stable democracy. Politics in Ghana is dominated by two parties: National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the National Patriotic Party (NPP), and they have now twice peacefully transferred the government to the other party.

After a few turbulent decades following the independence in 1957, Flight Lieutenant JJ Rawlings completed the country's fifth military coup in 1981, with the declared aim to lay the foundations for a modern democratic state. Rawlings won the subsequent presidential election in 1992 and 1996 for the NDC, which he had founded. He thus stayed in power until 2000 when presidential elections were won by the NPP presidential candidate JA Kufuor. Kufour sat until 2008, after re-election in 2004.

The president is elected for 4 years and can sit a maximum of two periods. The president must be elected directly and by an absolute majority. After the first round of elections in December 2008, neither John Evans Atta Mills from the NDC or Nana Akufo-Addo from the NPP obtained an absolute majority. The result of the second round of the election on the 28th of December was also narrow and the votes from a single constituency where the Electoral Commission had suspended the votes due to irregularities could have been crucial. However, in the end Mills was announced president with a margin of less than half a percent of the votes.

In December 2012 there will once more be election in Ghana, and it is expected to be a close race between the same candidates from 2008, the president John Evans Atta Mills from the NDC and Nana Akufo-Addo from the NPP.

In general international organizations characterize human rights in Ghana as relatively good as critical, sustained or systematic violation does not occur. However, police violations are reported regularly and detainees often wait unreasonably long before they get their case before a judge. Conditions in prisons also leave much to be desired, which the government has taken up in order to improve the conditions for the inmates. The President has also exercised his discretionary right to release prisoners as a response to good behavior.

Ghana has ratified the main UN conventions on human rights and press freedom is respected. However, the UN states that human rights violations continue to occur particularly with regards to trafficking and sexual assault. There have also been cases where traditional customs have violated women's rights. Ghana is still a male dominated society and hence there remains to be challenges concerning gender equality.

The Constitution provides freedom of religion and Ghana is a good example of how Christians and Muslims can live side by side and respect each other's religion. The Constitution also guarantees freedom of speech and assembly and it forbids the use of torture. There are furthermore proscriptions against discrimination due to race, sex, disability, linguistic and social status, however, homosexual expressions are forbidden and gay rights are threatened.

Although Ghana's government has declared a "zero tolerance" towards corruption, studies show clearly that corruption occurs, especially in the police, customs and judiciary system, but also in the education and health sector. Ghana was in 2011 placed number 69 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index with a score of 3.9. In 2010 the score was 4.1, and any score below 5 is an expression of “serious corruption”. Among African countries Ghana was rated as number 8.

Ghana's Foreign Policy

Ghana's foreign policy is about "good neighbourliness" and it’s centrepiece is the African Union (AU) and the West African region, ECOWAS ("Economic Community of West African States"), consisting of 15 countries with approximately 250 million inhabitants (half of which are Nigerians) Apart from the relationship to the nearest French-speaking neighbours (Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Togo), the relation to Nigeria is of particular importance to Ghana.

The conflict arisen from the presidential elections in Cote d’Ivoire in late 2010 put pressure on Ghana. The country was not prepared to contribute to a military intervention in the neighbouring country before all other options had been exhausted. At the same time Ghana was not prepared to break the united, strong position, that ECOWAS in particular was able to muster and which was then followed up by both the UN and the AU. Ghana argued that an ECOWAS military intervention was more rhetorical than real, which also quickly proved to be the case. Subsequently, President Ouattara in Cote d’Ivoire publicly acknowledged the value of President Mills' “quiet diplomacy “.

African unity has been central to Ghanaian foreign policy ever since the independence and thus Ghana was the founder of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the AU. Therefore, successive Ghanaian governments, including the one currently in power, always leaned close to AU in international issues. Ghana also founded the Non-Aligned Movement (Non Aligned Movement), the cooperation in the G77 group and other South-South collaborations that continue to play a major role in the Ghanaian foreign policy. For both political and economic reasons the relations to the BRIC countries have been enforced lately.

Ghana was a member of the UN Security Council in 2006-7. Its contribution was generally constructive, e.g. in relation to Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire. Ghana is a major contributor to UN peacekeeping operations, and there are currently Ghanaian troops (military, police and civilian) involved in five UN missions in Africa, including ONUCI in Cote d'Ivoire (512), UNMIL in Liberia (852), UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone (782), MONUC in Congo DRC (464) and UNIFIL in Lebanon (651).