DUOPOLISTIC ELECTIONS AND DEMOCRATISATION OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN GHANA

The agenda for Ghana’s economic and political transformation should be located in the broad institutional context that shapes the principal ideas and defines the basic parameters within which the agenda can be effectively implemented. It is the political context that will determine the limits and opportunities for the realisation of the transformational agenda. Therefore, an examination of Ghana’s political system, its original character, and subsequent changes is of paramount importance. While the 1992 Constitution has proved to be the country’s most resilient constitution, in the course of the three decades in which it has been in force, we have witnessed Ghana’s steady decline into a winner-takes-all system where political leaders are now more motivated by the desire to capture power than to exercise true stewardship of affairs of state. There is now a more or less entrenched political duopoly in which two big political parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), alternate control of the executive and legislature to the total exclusion of the other 27 registered political parties. These two political parties are so dominant that since 2016, none of the other political parties have been able to win a seat in parliament. The control of state power at the local government level is equally concentrated in the hands of these two parties because of Article 55(3) of the constitution which prevents political parties from participating in local governance. This constitutional provision allows the president to appoint all metropolitan, municipal, and district chief executives (MMDCEs) as well as the 30 percent of assembly members, all of whom also happen to be affiliated with the president’s party. Hence, this institutional set-up, rather than preventing the participation of political parties in local governance, actual hands over the control of executive power at all levels of the state to the ruling party while excluding all others. DUOPOLISTIC ELECTIONS AND DEMOCRATISATION OF LOCAL GOVERNANCE IN GHANA – March 23