Elections or Elites’ Selections of Presidential Candidates? How the rigged system works in NPP and NDC

If you have heard the Assin Central Constituency Member of Parliament (MP), Kennedy Ohene Agyapong on verbal onslaughts across the country in the ongoing campaign to elect the flagbearer of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) against President Akufo-Addo, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, some regional ministers, members of parliament and regional chairmen of his own party, it was not simply because he is habitually emotive, controversial and has a proclivity for attacking all people he disagrees with in politics and public life in general.

It was also not because he necessarily hated all those he was verbally attacking, especially when it is public knowledge that he enjoyed years of fraternal and cosy relationships with most of them including the influential chairman of the NPP in the Ashanti Region, Chairman Wontumi known in real life as Bernard Antwi Boasiako.

Kennedy Agyapong’s verbal offensive on the upper echelon of his party and government was simply a strategy of fighting the firmly rooted architecture of incumbency that has always existed not only in the NPP but also in the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) since the political liberalization and transition to democracy in 1992.

Although these party structures are supposed to primarily play the role of political socialization, efficiently steer the affairs of the parties on the ground, ensure the sustenance of the parties as election-winning vehicles and also provide a fair, even and transparent playing field for all internal competitions, for years these have not always been the case.

Instead, the party structures have often served as conduits for rigging internal elections for incumbent candidates or candidates favoured by incumbent presidents, using what is widely known in the Ghanaian electoral parlance as the ‘Mafia Tactics’. Thus, terms such as ‘We Will Mafia Him’, ‘He Was Mafiared’, and ‘Can He Survive the Mafia Work?’ are commonly used with jest by those familiar with this type of patronage and transactional politics evident in Ghana’s Fourth Republic, during both parliamentary and presidential primaries.

Thus, just as Jerry Rawling’s ‘Greedy Bastards’ and ‘Babies’ with Sharp Teeth’ labels during the NDC’s presidential primary for the 2012 elections, Kennedy Agyapong’s outburst of ‘I Will Give Them a Showdown,’ ‘I Dare Him,’ ‘I Challenge Them’ are mere election communication strategy and gimmicks to ward-off the perceived ‘mafia structure’ from potentially rigging the November 4, 2023 NPP presidential primary election for incumbent vice-president Mahamudu Bawumia.

Specifically, since this was an internal contest, Kennedy’s strong words were exclusively targeted at three distinct stakeholders or influential groups in the party and government. The first group include the incumbent president Nana Akufo-Addo, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and their appointees such as sector ministers, regional ministers, chief executive officers of state-owned enterprises, and board members, among others.

The second stakeholders targeted in the diatribe are the entire party structures from the national to the local levels and lastly, the grassroots members who are the ordinary party delegates. His main strategy with his verbal attacks is to expose and disarm this perceived rigging architecture led by the upper echelon of the party and government. To scare them away from unfairly interfering in the contest, these leaders must feel or perceive some form of retribution or consequences for their actions, if they dare intervene on behalf of vice-president Bawumia.

This strategy is not different from that of Jerry Rawlings when his wife and former first lady Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings stood against incumbent president Atta Mills in the internal contest that led to the 2012 elections. Although Jerry Rawlings throughout the campaign refrained from directly and publicly mentioning names, he identified some influential individuals behind the scenes he perceived were scheming to get incumbent president Atta Mills elected over his wife and described them with various derogatory names such as “Greedy Bastards,” ‘Babies With Sharp Teeth,’ among other disparaging labels.

Recently, former Local Government Minister under Jerry Rawlings’ government, Prof. Kwamena Ahwoi has in his book titled “Working with Rawlings” named the individuals he believed the former President was referring to as ‘Greedy Bastards’. These “includes him, Prof. Ahwoi, former National Security Advisor Captain (Rtd) Kojo Tsikata, former Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission P. V. Obeng, Prof. Ahwoi’s brother Ato Ahwoi, former Finance Minister Kwame Peprah and former Information Minister Kofi Totobi-Quakyi” (MyJoyOnline, August 3, 2020).

Ironically, these individuals were instrumental in teleguiding the election victory of Jerry Rawlings in both 1992 and 1996 as well as the return to power of the NDC in the 2008 presidential elections with Prof. Atta Mills as the president. Presumably, Rawlings’ incessant invectives against them was informed by his innate knowledge of the capabilities of this political phalanx in the internal contest between his wife and former first lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings and incumbent president, Prof. Atta Mills and therefore sought to scare them from working to tilt the scale in favour of incumbent President Atta Mills.

In the same vein, when he was aspiring to lead the NPP for the 2008 presidential elections, President Nana Akufo-Addo also warned the party and indirectly President John Kufuor for that matter, against repeating the so-called ‘Swedru Declaration’ that fragmented the NDC in the 2000 elections, leading to its ignominious defeat by the NPP, led by John Agyekum Kufuor in December 2000. This warning from Nana Akufo-Addo was necessary given the perceived attempts by incumbent president John Kufuor backed by his appointees to use incumbency advantage to hoist Alan John Kwadwo Kyeremateng on the party as the flagbearer for the 2008 elections.

In the ensuing internal contestations, then aspirant Akufo-Addo won in the first round but was unable to garner the 50+1 (fifty plus one) votes to automatically lead the party. Alan had to give up his right for the second round of voting to allow Akufo-Addo sailed through and represented the party in the 2008 elections. However, it remains to be seen whether Kennedy Ohene Agyapong can this time around repeat the electoral successes of candidate Akufo-Addo and defeat the incumbent vice-president Mahamudu Bawumia who is largely perceived as the establishment candidate.

In all these discussions of internal election manipulations among the key members of the two major political parties in Ghana, one of the most contentious issues is the question of the voters register also called the delegates list. Key presidential aspirants in Ghana’s elections have often accused party executives at the national, regional and constituency levels of conspiring to unfairly populate the voter register for internal election with known and certified supporters and sympathisers of the incumbent or the establishment candidate.

For instance, former finance minister and presidential aspirant for the NDC, Dr Kwabena Duffuor withdrew from the recently held presidential primary election of the party at the eleventh hour. His grievances against the party’s leadership included irregularities and flawed process in the preparation of the elections, particularly regarding the voters register. He argued that, lack of commitment from the party’s leadership to supervise free and fair elections means “taking part in such an event will be akin to knowingly drinking from a poisoned calabash.”

While it is fair to suggest that president John Mahama’s ability to emerge victorious in that internal contest was not in doubt from day one, in view of his superior degree of popularity and electoral visibility among all the contestants, there is very little doubt that the party structure, especially at the upper echelon had schemed to ensure a resounding victory for him (President Mahama) in order to send a strong message of strength to the ruling NPP that it is prepared to wrestle power in the December 2024 elections.

Since the political transition and the founding elections of 1992, political party leaders in Ghana have often played dual and conflicting roles regarding free and fair elections in choosing their presidential elections. While they have initiated and implemented various reforms in that regard, they have also often aided incumbent candidates in devising strategies to undermine the very reforms they have supported within their political parties to enhance what they describe as popular participation in the governance system. The so-called ‘Mafia System’ (and they are not even ashamed of calling it so) undermines fair competition and offers untrammelled opportunities for the incumbents to emerge as winners, often resulting in increased tension, acrimony and division within the parties.

Few will therefore argue that this type of patronage politics with several layers of brokers and clients in the two main parties fuels the perception of monetization of politics in Ghana and concurs with the conclusion of a recent study by the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) that a successive presidential election in Ghana requires a presidential aspirant to spend not less than US$100 million. The broader question that needs to be answered in this debate is where the presidential aspirants, particularly the incumbents get this huge amount of money for their elections.

Certainly not from their personal pockets or from party supporters and sympathisers who themselves often ‘wash or prepare their hands waiting to chop’ (as they normally say) from the presidential aspirants during elections. Consequently, the attendant corruption, waste in the public sector, acrimony, tension, ethnic and social division, electoral violence and incitement to violence as well as the ‘it is my time to chop’ mentality of the political elites and their party members are not unrelated to this type of quid pro quo politics.

Added to this is the propensity for all incumbent presidents since 1992 to use their privileges and powers while in office to build financial empires under various guises to guarantee their status as ‘king-makers’ within their own parties and at the national level even after leaving office.

There is hardly any doubt that this hoarding of financial resources by the political class in charge of the state’s apparatuses of power is done at the expense of expenditures in various critical sectors of the economy, particularly the social sectors where unemployment, endemic poverty, diseases and deprivation are rampant and widespread across every nook and cranny of the country.

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The author, Abdul Hakim Ahmed, Ph.D is a Political Science Lecturer, the University of Education, Winneba. Contact E-mail: ahahmed@uew.edu.gh