Electoral fortunes of the two co-dominant political parties in Ghana

‘Breaking the 8” is the NPP’s electioneering slogan for the forthcoming general election in 2024 when the party hopes to break the hitherto tradition of voters in the current fourth republic electing either co-dominant party for alternating two 4-year term.

“Winning the second independence for Ghana in 2024” is the emerging NDC electioneering slogan for the forthcoming general election, the “2024 independent struggle”, recently highlighted by NDC Volta Regional Secretary James Gunu during the current party national office campaign

Two years out, the above competing slogans spell out the different campaign approaches for the 2024 general elections. This may be why

NPP
Western interests and the current NPP Government are deeply intertwined - of mutual benefit and existential import, and cannot be disentangled easily or soon

The West is of the view that:
1. Only the NPP can be relied upon to guarantee the US military base/facilities in Ghana, now shared with allies Britain and France as part of Western security architecture to contain Russia and Jihadist forces in the ECOWAS region

2. The revolutionary origins of the NDC and membership of influential left wing elements ensure the party maintains its non-aligned foreign policy posture at a time western global interests are threatened.

3. Politically diplomatically culturally, Ghana is important to keeping Africa and the African diaspora in the western fold. An NPP government is more reliable to ensure that.

4. Centrepiece of the West’s human rights promotion abroad is sex equality and gender diversity. On latter, NDC is more vocally defiant, obscuring generality of reservations by a wide spectrum of Ghanaians

5. Ethnic majority governments in Africa guarantee stability and preservation of long-term Western interests. NPP is an ethnic majority government in a way NDC is not

Given the preference of the West for an NPP government, there is no amount of trouble the current NPP would find itself in which the West would not get it out of. And far from breaking the 8, the NPP would aim at a more ambitious goal of winning four additional general elections successively and in the process breaking the 19 years its major competitor ruled Ghana from 1981 to 2000, as in the military government of 1981 to 1992 (PNDC) and the elected government of 1992 to 2000 (NDC), immediately before and after the coming into existence of the fourth republic. On the basis of the enumerated above, the more ambitious NPP goal cannot be dismissed with certainty

NDC
History tells us, and NDC would be so comforted, that one set of conditions does tend to have diametrically opposite effects, even though historians who tend to repeat themselves would not admit that. The above set of conditions may have the following unintended effects:

- Providing overt or covert security support for an incumbent Government for purely or partially domestic political purposes may galvanise popular opinion against US military presence in Ghana and provoke overt anti western sentiments

- Condoning economic inefficiencies of an incumbent Government may not help the electoral prospects of the incumbent Government

- Persistent agitation on gender diversity may backfire and increase discrimination against gender diverse groups.

By Nii Armah Kweifio-Okai, Melbourne