Lessons from Ghana’s 2008 elections

The recent Ghanaian presidential and parliamentary elections were historic in many ways. It was the most contested election in the country’s history, with record-breaking campaign expenditure. It took three rounds of voting for a victor to emerge; the first round was arguably the most peaceful and transparent election in our history, and the second round was characterised by a level of fraud and electoral malpractice never seen before in our history, a situation that tested the nerves of a people who are known to be peace-loving. Ultimately, peace and democracy prevailed. The election not only culminated in a peaceful transfer of power and the emergence of a minority as a new majority in parliament, but also left us with some intriguing lessons. These lessons are important because, through experience, we can make our democracy better. This article highlights some ‘common sense lessons’ from our last election that can make our leaders better, our voters smarter and our electoral institutions and voting processes stronger.

LESSONS FOR CANDIDATES AND POLITICAL PARTIES

Money can no longer buy votes for victory

One of the biggest lessons from both the primaries and the general election was that candidates can no longer substitute money for concrete ideas, substantive messages or genuine appeal to voters as they have in the past. In the New Patriotic Party (NPP) primary for instance, some of the biggest campaign spenders ended up with woefully low votes – as low as one vote. I am by no means downplaying the crucial role of money in electoral campaigns, but there are certain things that money simply can’t buy. A candidate can fund long political ads, but if they are not the right message he may not only be wasting his money but may actually be funding his own downfall. Gone are the days when a tot of ‘akpeteshie’ or a new t-shirt could earn a vote. Not even cloths, bicycles, TV sets or fresh Ghana cedi notes can guarantee anyone votes these days. Ghanaians have learnt to do the smart thing, to take the money offered and then vote according to conscience at the ballot box.

There is no such thing as inevitability

Presidential and parliamentary candidates who appeared to have presumptuously arrogated to themselves the right of inevitability as winners learnt a bitter lesson that must go out to all parties and politicians. No single factor affected the NPP’s chances of winning the 2008 elections more than the public perception that its candidate was arrogant and thought he must and would become the president of Ghana. The public may have their reasons for this opinion about the candidate, but as someone who knows Nana Akufo-Addo, I think his campaign did a terrible job of portraying the easy-going and affable Nana I know. In my assessment, one of the most effective campaign ads of the season was the NDC (National Democratic Congress) ad in which a young female university student directly imputed, in very strong words, characteristics of egotism and an ‘I know it all’ attitude against the NPP candidate. From a strategic point of view, it was a fatal mistake that the NPP did so little to push back on, and continued ads that projected flamboyancy and deployed surrogates whom supporters said ‘only speak big English’. All this was based on the faulty campaign assumption that their candidate would win inevitably.

Impact of ads over-estimated

One of the subtle but significant indirect battles in the 2008 election cycle was the one between the powers of traditional campaign advertising versus direct contact with voters. Either by choice or circumstance the NDC, which did not have anything close to the money and power of the NPP to compete in ads, took their case directly to voters in a door-to-door strategy. If TV ads were as influential as assumed by some parties, the NPP would have won the elections hands down. One of the most noticeable observations I made upon my arrival in Ghana a few weeks before the first round of elections was the dominance of one party over the airwaves, with ads that were several minutes long running simultaneously on various TV channels and radio stations. This is not to discount the power of political ads, but to point out that a good campaign strategy must combine ads with effective voter outreach. It is easier and fancier to run ads, but as a matter of common sense, voters respond far more positively to direct contact, as recent studies have shown.

Ideas and values matter, but election results are ultimately about votes

When it comes to choosing a president, Ghanaians seem to be putting more emphasis on ideas and values than in the past. Today, more and more voters look beyond tribe and qualifications in examining candidates’ personal and professional qualities and values. This explains why voters responded favourably to the exciting ideas of the Convention People’s Party’s (CPP) Paa Kwesi Ndoum and to the touted qualities of humility and integrity of the NDC’s John Atta Mills. This also explains why allegations of arrogance and drug use, even though unsubstantiated, nearly sunk the candidacy of NPP’s Nana Akuffo-Addo, one of the most formidable candidates of the season both in the primary and the general elections. Not too long ago, voters’ choices partly depended on fiddle-faddles such as the handsomeness of a candidate. This is no longer the case. Therefore, in today’s society, politicians need to watch their actions because they will need the character capital at ‘voting time’. Ultimately, the real test lies in deliberately and tactically transforming the excitement about a candidate’s personality and ideas into votes. You can campaign all you want and have the best ideas on earth, but until you have a strategy to translate all this into votes, ‘it all don’t matter’.

National elections require national outreach

In general elections, the winner ends up being the person who draws support from the greatest number of diverse elements of society. The Ghanaian electorate consists of 10 regions with diverse ethnic, religious and social groups. It should, therefore, be of great concern to the NPP that the party only continues to do well with one ethnic group and very poorly with the rest. The NPP won only two out of the 10 regions, with enough votes to be close to winning the presidential elections. Even if they had obtained enough votes to win, it is not good for the image of a national political party to seem interested in only a few segments of the country. It is true that the NPP is a democratic party open to all Ghanaians of all backgrounds, but this is also not enough. It has built-up a reputation – intentionally or unintentionally – as a party in which people from only certain places or with certain lineages matter. The leadership of the party must do more to reach out and include ‘others’. It is understandable and necessary for campaigns to pay extra attention to traditional and potential strongholds. It is disastrous, however, when such actions appear to completely ignore or alienate everybody else outside of that stronghold, including those who may never be strong supporters, but may provide the small margin of votes needed to win.

Polls don’t win elections, votes do

The assumption that making up phoney polls will make your candidate become president is not only naïve but stupid. There were a number of groups, from the Danquah Institute to the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), that constantly bombarded the public with ridiculous and false polls, even to the point of predicting a landslide victory for their preferred candidates. It is important to note that no one expects polls to be spot-on right; that is why even scientific polls have margins of error. The argument here is not that these groups should have been accurate, what matters is that these polls must have been fabricated or so poorly conducted that they were not even within any excusable margin of error. This kind of dishonest conduct not only undermines the ability of the guilty groups to conduct polls ever again, but also damages their credibility on other public causes they may undertake in the future. We must take due note of such fraudulent entities, and treat them with the contempt they deserve.

Days of rigging to win may be over

Many politicians would rather rig if they had the chance than actually work to earn victory. But with the level of vigilance and interest of ordinary citizens in the political process, combined with the growing culture of democracy, it is more and more difficult to win through rigging. No doubt both NDC and NPP attempted and did rig in this election, but I don’t believe anyone was able to rig enough votes to win. Of course, losers would always want us to believe that they lost because the winner rigged, and no wonder NPP attempted to manipulate or reject the results based on this excuse. But as a matter of common sense, it doesn’t make sense that a party that lost eight out of 10 regions and lost over 20 of its incumbent parliamentary seats can be crying wolf that they lost because there was rigging in one region. The lesson is that Ghanaians are determined to allow nothing but their votes to be the decider in who governs them. Political candidates must accordingly busy themselves with how they can work to earn those votes, not how to rig them.

LESSONS FOR THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN GENERAL

Citizens or groups of people who desire change, want to be heard, or seek representation must be willing to stand-up and fight for it. There is no better way to express this than the words of Frederick Douglas: ‘If there is no struggle there is no progress… Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.’ In political processes, this may require more than mere press statements and conferences. It may even require more than mere agitation. All these are important, but they need to be backed with tactical and positive action. And that is why it is disappointing that despite the desire and commitment of the women’s movement to increase women’s political representation in Ghana, there are fewer women in parliament today than in the previous one, dropping from 10.9 per cent to 8.7 per cent. Groups like the Women’s Manifesto Coalition deserve credit for their efforts in terms of raising public awareness and calling for action on the part of political parties. But the women’s movement as a whole certainly can and must do better with actionable efforts that demand and hold parties and institutions accountable to ensure women’s representation and meaningful participation.

LESSONS FOR THE NATION

We should never ever again, as a nation, take our peace for granted. A lesson that we should have learnt from Kenya even long before our election is that no society is immune from violence. Maintenance of the peace and stability that we enjoy can only be ensured through continuous and conscious effort, and not complacency. As a nation, we appeared to have slacked for a while with regard to peace and stability in the early stages of the campaign season. Consequent tensions over bloated registers, intimidations and tribal politics that were ignored for so long could have been catastrophic mistakes had it not been the last minute efforts by the Ghana Peace Council, Obrafour and many others.

As someone who has been involved in two US presidential campaigns and elections, I am the first to admit that no system is perfect. Nevertheless, we must not cease in our efforts to perfect our system. This is why every election cycle should be an improvement over the previous one, and that is why the level of malpractice in the second round of the presidential elections is unacceptable. Relevant institutions (the Electoral Commission especially) must investigate and document all the tactics used by parties and their agents to rig. More importantly, we must put in mechanisms to prevent them in subsequent elections.

LESSONS FOR WEST AFRICA

Yes, west Africans can have elections and the democratic change of governments without killing each other. Ghana went through three contentious rounds of voting, which resulted in opposition victory and power transferred from one government to another without a single loss of life. It may not be and does not have to be perfect, and there will definitely be tensions and challenges, but we can have elections that pass a reasonable threshold of fairness and represent the will of the people. And it is only through this that we can create the environment for realising the new ECOWAS vision of: ‘A borderless, prosperous and cohesive region where people have the capacity to access and harness its enormous resources through the creation of opportunities for sustainable development and environmental preservation.’ As the poorest region on the face of the planet, we cannot afford to waste any more time destroying what we have built or killing each other. If Ghana can hold free and fair elections, all other west African countries can.

* Mawuli Dake of the Africa Initiative is a leading African human rights advocate and social strategist. He was a key member of President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign team.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.