Ghana: Political Pettiness in a Season of Hope - AllAfrica.com

Obeng Gyan BusiaAccra

Even though I had decided to travel into a self-imposed exile with sees to my regular part to our national political discourse, recent developments in the state have got compelled me to stop this hiatus.

The timing of the startup of our 4th democracy have been a amalgamated approval for the state to the extent that it have largely synchronized the Ghanaian and American political calendars. However, at the same time, given the magnitude of the American political campaign procedure and the amount of involvement it bring forths around the world, it have always overshadowed our ain political relation with sees to the issues that people and the political groups they stand for raise in their pursuit for power.

Ghana's enormous strides

Yet, political relation is a scientific discipline albeit a soft one, so regardless of where and when it takes place, we can always retroflex the issues without much respect to the context. Having had the privilege of observing the American political campaign procedure in the past 1 and one-half years, it is very difficult indeed to defy the enticement to direct contrast this procedure with what is happening in Republic Of Republic Of Ghana now as far as the relevancy of the issues is concerned, especially, from the side of the opposition.

Even though as a state we are still in the political wilderness determination our manner to the Promised Land of a full-fledged democracy, Ghana have made enormous paces in this way compared to most of our equals on the continent.

Issues

Democracy is a multi-dimensional conception as the well-thought-of Harvard University sociologist, Daniel Bell, have observed. In short, democracy is a trilogy of the free market, political liberalism and cultural diversity. Thus, given the modest, yet meaningful advancement the state have got got made in these three spheres in the last 8 years, one would have expected the issues in the current political campaign to be forward looking and at the very least be consistent with this grim national attempt to deepen our nascent democracy.

However, ironically, judging from the dictums by certain people and political groups so far the inevitable decision looks to be that many of our political elite are caught in a clip deflection regarding the issues that are of premier concern to the electorate.

Beating of warfare drums

There have been infinite figure of issues and attendant dictums so far but allow us for now concentrate on the premature whipping of warfare membranophones by certain people from the country's functionary opposition. Bereft of thoughts that tin interpret into realistic manifestoes with which they can convert the electorate to vote for them in a free and just electoral environment, these people on the political campaign trail have got resorted to fear mongering by making dictums to the consequence that there will be mayhem should a peculiar political political party win the 2008 elections.

The premiss of such as foolhardy statements is that the opinion party stole the 2004 presidential elections through projecting the result of the elections, a time-honored statistical practice. The unsafe premise they do from this is that this behaviour will be repeated in this year's elections. While it is not the purpose of this article to inquiry the truth of this information or delve into the logic by the 'war lords", it is important, in the supreme involvement of our dear country, to pay attending to the world of the danger that lurks behind electoral fraud.

Electoral system

This phone call for attending to our electoral system is all the more than of import given the fact that flawed elections are a planetary phenomenon regardless of the degree of a country's socioeconomic development, a fact which was forcibly brought place during the 2000 U.S. Presidential Elections in the state of Florida.

It is trite cognition that Africa have had its just share of this cancer, and despite notable electoral reforms, we are still on a acquisition curve. In fact, the recent events in Republic Of Kenya have got vividly demonstrated how electoral systems could turn out to be deadly if they went awry.

Relevant Links

Worldwide elections always supply a batch of effervescence or general excitement. Nevertheless, it is of import that some cardinal facets of elections be well understood to function as a bank check on often unrestrained, mindless and provocative linguistic communication that have go a hall-mark of electioneering political campaign in our state in recent times.

The fact is that the electoral machinery is very complex since it affects a government body, i.e. the Electoral Commission, its lasting decentralised staff and the one thousands of impermanent military officers or staffers. As human institutions, electoral disposals are often harass by both natural and man-made problems. Natural jobs or "acts of God" such as as lightening, thunder, floods, inclement weather condition etc, are by nature and definition outside the horizon of human inventiveness and power.

This paramount "force" is duly recognized by the law, which also factors it into legal rules and thus supply concrete evidence for the inclusion of liability or restrictive clauses in contractual relations. Thus it is said that although a fraud in an election represents an abnormality not all abnormalities in an election are fraudulent.

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