One Election, Two Victories: Ghana’s 2016 General Elections Revisited

Awaisu Imurana Braimah,Alhassan Salifu Bawah

doi:10.11648/j.ss.20190805.14

Abstract

This article examines election-related violence that characterizes some electoral processes across Africa. The study thematically focussed on two dominant political parties in Ghana, thus the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in respect of the December 2016 Presidential election. These two political parties have alternated executive power in Ghana since the birth of the Fourth Republic in January 1993, with Ghana having failed to maintain the status quo immediately after independence from British colonial rule. The claims and counterclaims of victory immediately after polls closed in the December, 2016 Presidential and Parliamentary elections, brought Ghana to the brink of election violence. Both parties’ counter-claimed victory, purportedly based on ‘results’ obtained from their polling agents posted across the various polling stations in all the 275 constituencies. The Electoral Commission (EC), which supervised the general election was surprisingly mute in declaring the winner of the 2016 Presidential election in the midst of these controversies. This paper argues that the vacuum created by the EC per its delay in the declaration of certified Presidential election results after polls had closed, was a blot on Ghana’s status as the beacon of democracy and peace in Africa.

Highlights

Democracy has unprecedentedly spread across much of the world
While all 10 party elites of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) were of the view that the fracas and the near-live eruption of election violence was as a result of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) self-declaration as victors of the Presidential election; then main opposition political party (the NPP) party officials blamed it on the NDC and the Electoral Commission (EC)
The NPP officials agreed in principle that it was wrong to declare themselves as winners, but they did so based on the Presidential results declared at the polling stations across the country

Summary

Introduction

Democracy has unprecedentedly spread across much of the world. The concept ‘democracy’, is arguably the most promiscuous terminology in the political science discourse. Electoral competition is part of the routine body politic and the scion or bedrock of democratic quality It is a means by which contesting political parties trade in a variety of ideas including other mainstream strategies (i.e., propaganda) to win the ‘minds and souls’ of the electorate, to vote in their favour to either acquire or maintain executive power. The voting booth, and not the barrel of the gun has become the internationally accepted instrument of political change [1] This important democratic gymnastics is to greater extent, mired by election violence in many developing countries across the globe. Some scholars in the domain of political science, view contested elections as the ‘primary litmus test for democracy’ This is because, electoral competition is a major determinant of democratic sustenance [2]

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Discussion

Conclusion