National Dialogue on the Blended Representation Principle (BRP) in Ghana

1. This note explains why there is a critical need for a national dialogue on BRP; highlights the meaning, features, outcomes of the construct, and the corresponding triggering actions necessitating the call for such an undertaking.

2. Ghana urgently needs a national dialogue on the direction of its politics because the shell of the society is rotten and the cracks are widening and deepening. The type of democracy practiced at the national and local levels makes it very difficult for several people to make ends meet. It is mainly for this reason why there has been advocacies for taking a pause and ponder on the political direction of the fabric of society, hence the call to embrace the Blended Representation Principle (BRP) in efforts to organize collectively for a development policy strategy which will make things easier addressing kitchen table issues.

3. BRP is a fusion of traditional African and Western democratic ideals of representation, transparency, accountability, and participation for organizing the designs and shape of statehood according to the needs, realities, and aspirations of target communities. The key message is that power be shared between leaders selected based on Western democratic ideals (elections, multiparty politics), and leaders chosen based on traditional African norms, and conventions.

4. Reasons for the BRP proposition are commonsensical, historical, and restraining transnational elite interests and behavior regarding resource accumulation modalities in the global community of nations. In practice, BRP entails the following:

5. Participation in politics at the local level will be communal, and at the national level, it will be based on multiparty operations. This means that representatives at the local level will be leaders of the communities chosen solely by members based on traditional norms, and conventions. Registered competing political parties will present suitable candidates to the communities constituting a constituency, and members of the communities will elect one of them by universal adult suffrage to represent the constituency at the national level. Once a representative is elected, the person becomes a consensual representative for all members of the constituency and not a representative of party members only or those who voted for him or her. The guiding mindset will be allegiance to community supersedes that of the party, and members of the community will have full rights and control of the power of recall, and not parties deciding the fates of representatives. The same multiparty arrangement will be in place for the elections of the president to lead and govern at the national level.

6. The structure and composition of Local Government will be based on the following institutional arrangements and practices:

7. Traditional chiefs (both males and females) would represent communities in their respective local electoral areas at corresponding designated district assemblies (DAs); There will be one hundred percent membership composition by traditional authorities in DAs and municipal assemblies. District Chief Executives (DCEs) and deputies would be elected from members of the DAs and municipal assemblies by representatives. There will be a guaranteed centrality of gender balance in the composition of the DAs—that is, if a male is elected as DCE, then an equally qualified female is elected automatically as deputy and vice versa. This is a centuries-old practice in many indigenous African countries adapted to the present context of development administration.

The DCE chairs the executive council; deputy presides over DA. Comparable arrangements for the metropolitan assemblies will have to be considered along the lines described here. The leaders will be supported by cadres of technical officials and experts assigned to the districts for managing resources at the local governance landscape.

8. Participation in communal and multiparty-based representatives’ selection principles will operate to ensure autonomy of local government institutions, and serve as a bastion against leviathan executive overreach and abuse through the creative use of transparency and accountability channels from both knowledge systems. Channels from the indigenous African knowledge system will utilize the psycho-social composition of the people where primordial loyalties exist and used for coexistence in the communities. These value mechanisms are based on the concepts of not separating humans from nature in terms of natural resource exploitation; and the belief systems that human existence is based on the notion of past, present and the future; the present generation holds in trust natural resources for the future and unborn generations while meeting present needs. The contents of oaths of public office administration and commitments at all levels will be crafted to instill awareness and knowledge of such value systems with an underlying guiding sense of intergenerational care and responsibility for common resources.

9. Western ideals and practices of ensuring transparency and accountability to be combined to strengthen such measures will include, among others, well-known institutional mechanisms of state of the nation address (SONA), budgeting, taxation, revenue generation and sense of compliance and obligations, and effective use of the annual reports of watchdog expenditure and spending agencies.

10. Local Government will no longer exists as the weakest link in the ruling national-local partnership value chain in government transactions and operations. Decentralization will have real meaning and ceases to be mainly a channel for an extension of central government interests at the local level. Corresponding officials at lower levels will no longer exist and operate as poodles of national authorities by the fiats of appointments and dismissals. This manner of participation is geared at providing grounded checks and balancing of individualized and collective interests at both local and national levels.

11. As community members select their own leaders to constitute local government assembly members and occupants of corresponding offices, they are placed in unhindered positions to exert influence as checks on local performance of duties and responsibilities. This, in turn, would likely translate into collective strengthening and empowering of local government institutions and catapult them into spheres of influence to minimize or eliminate impunity at the national level.

12. For the regional ruling councils (RRC) of target societies, 50 percent of delegates will be chosen by the members of the DAs within the region, and 50 percent of delegates are chosen based on multiparty arrangements of electing interested individuals to represent the region at the RRCs with a term limit. Members of the RRC select the heads and deputies among themselves based on the aforementioned-gendered balance principle.

13. BRP has been constructed with the grounding mindset that the indigenous forms of representation and participation would be problematic in urban settings because of the different philosophical underpinnings therefore various forms of the Western versions and formats would seem to provide the solution. Conversely, the wholesale application of the Western version seems inept in the rural and several parts of the few semi-urban settings. This state of affairs is evident in several attempts by successive governments in Ghana/Africa to create, without much success, credible and responsible governance structures. In a nutshell, this is what the BRP construct is about.

14. There seems to be no ambiguity that universal adult suffrage via competitive partisan

elections regardless of inherent flaws is the acceptable means of representation and participation of Ghanaians/Africans in governance at the national level. Ghana and many countries have chalked up relative successes by electing presidents and Members of Parliament through peaceful elections leading to successive alternate changes in party-based ruling governments.

15. What seems contentious is the governance and leadership designs at the local level. With the 1992 Constitution, the local governance and leadership design have been based on the appointment of the district chief executives (DCEs), and the nonpartisan elections of corresponding district assemblies and unit committee members as the major actors.

16. Over the years, associated with this mode of representation and participation in governance at the local level are the undermining characteristics:

1. national executive overreach, influence, and control through appointments, inequitable allocation, and distribution of development resources;
2. abysmal level of interests and participation by ordinary people in the governance arrangement;
3. the lack of transparency in decision-making and resource allocation, and inability of the ordinary majority to hold the local officials accountable for stewardship;
4. arrested development aspirations of the communities.

17. As the development dividends of the prevailing local governance and leadership designs become increasingly elusive, there have been numerous calls for some reformative actions to redress the situation. What seems to gain groundswell consensus is a desist from the appointment of the district chief executives by the national executive and their direct elections by the people on competitive partisan basis alongside corresponding assemblies and unit committees.

18. To be precise, the call for institutional reforms at the local level is well-placed. However, whether to continue with the nonpartisan method or introduce competitive partisan elections seems to be missing the point that the inability of prevailing local governance arrangement to meet the aspirations of the ordinary populace is a systemic leadership design and governance anomaly than either nonpartisan or partisan elections of the major actors.

19. Arguably, the backseat role assigned to the institution of chieftaincy in the local government design and operations is the root of abysmal interest and participation by people in the local governance, and the inability of these local structures to evolve into a bulwark for ensuring transparency and accountability in national governance operations.

20. As Ghana is branded a “beacon of democracy” in Africa, it could further strengthen its democratic credentials by contributing uniquely to designs of local governance systems for the region founded on the core principles and values of its civilizations. The persistence of poverty and the vicissitude of the poor majority continue to be an indelible mark on the capability of national leadership to stem the tide and lead the country out of the abyss of deprivations amid relatively endowed human, natural, and material resources.

21. A critical factor underpinning this scenario is the inability of the emergent national leadership (since independence and regardless of professed party-political leanings) to craft and institutionalize local governance and leadership arrangements capable of energizing the vast majority to participate vigorously in development efforts beyond recent periodic involvement in competitive partisan electioneering campaigns and voting. This situation at the local level affects the overall quality of governance in the country in terms of participation in decision-making, transparency, openness, and accountability for stewardship in the use (or abuse) of development resources.

22. Respectable dialogue is required to take a critical look at the relegation to the margins the institution of chieftaincy. A common refrain has been that some of the occupants of these leadership positions exhibit worse behavior and attitudes in real practical life than the civilian counterparts. However, in the context of BRP, such a sentiment is mainly focused on individual behaviors and not on the institutional arrangements. Individuals occupy the position for a certain period and after that they are gone. Arguably, it is safer and wiser to consider the intent of the founders of the communities and the associated institutional practices which continue to be relevant in the present context and utilize such mechanisms to strengthen the political democracy of the day.

23. It is important that Ghanaians incorporate BRP into their thinking of tackling some of the leadership and governance challenges stemming from the principles of representation, transparency, accountability, and participation which are universal principles instrumental in the practice of democracy anywhere in the world. BRP will enable an increase in voluntary public participation in politics, and guarantee transparency and accountability in the use of the public purse and resources. The alternative to BRP is to continue the normalization of abnormalities in all walks of life.

24. BRP will trigger the following actions and hence the urgent need for a more respected and constructive national dialogue to construe the details and chart the path forward. These actions will include: (a) Constitutional Amendments and Local Government Enactments; (b) Comprehensive Capacity Enhancement Programs for orienting the Institution of Chieftaincy; (c) Establishing and Nurturing Implementation Instruments – National Task Force for Operationalization (NATFO); and Community of Learning and Practice (CLP); (d) Systematic Public Education, Outreach and Sensitization; and (e) Building Partnerships and Networks (Global and Indigenous).

Dr Kofi V. Anani is a Managing Partner of the Blended Knowledge Solutions Network dedicated to utilizing blended knowledge (global and indigenous) for transformative development. For further details on BRP, see the open access publication by the author, “Leadership in Independent Africa, Six Decades On: The Blended Representation Principle as a Cause of Afro-Optimism”, Zed Books, 2024 www.anani-afelenetwork.org ; www.bloomsburyopencollections.com