A NOTE ON THE GHANAIAN ELECTIONS

Abstract

IN THE CONCLUSION of their article on the Ghanaian elections Jeffries and Thomas posed the questions 'why then, finally did the Opposition leaders refuse to accept the Presidential elections?, and, 'why did they boycott the subsequent parliamentary election in which their parties' candidates may well have won many seats?' (p. 364) They are indeed correct in contending that the opposition leaders had after all known about the inaccuracy of the voters' register, that they should have anticipated a degree of attempted electoral malpractice, that they must have realized that more resources would be employed to assist the NDC's and Rawlings' campaign, and they must have realized that the incumbency advantage would apply. We concede all that. Indeed we expected not just attempted but actual electoral malpractices. Nevertheless, as they correctly pointed out, we did decide to go ahead and compete on that basis. It is also true that I did promise that 'once the Presidential Election on the 3 November 1992 is adjudged to be fair by INEC and all international observers and the Ghanaian public, I will cooperate fully with whoever is declared the winner and help in the transition from the PNDC administration to multi-party constitutional rule'. It is equally highly magnanimous on the part of the authors to concede that even if reneging on my promise was basically unjustified and politically highly regrettable, it 'does not seem appropriate to characterize the opposition leaders as simply bad losers motivated by sour grapes' (p. 365). Equally so is their rejection of Rawlings' naive assertion that the Opposition refused to contest again 'for fear of a more humiliating defeat at the parliamentary elections'. But despite their magnamity, their speculations as to why we decided not to accept the result of the presidential elections, why we boycotted the parliamentary elections and why I reneged on the assurance are wide of the mark. First, the Opposition refused to accept the results of the presidential election because we believe and still do that the presidential election was (and not must have been) rigged . Secondly, in spite of all the adverse conditions mentioned, we did indeed decide to participate in the presidential election for two main reasons. The first reason, which I have stated already, was that from the experience of the Opposition in both the Cameroon and Burkina Faso only a year or so earlier, we became convinced that even if we boycotted the elections the international community would accept the results. The second reason was that despite the