Ghana’s 4th Republic Not Impressive

The 4th republic, aside from engendering political competition in the area of infrastructural development, has not been too impressive to me. The greater competition which usually emanated from political diversity is absent resulting in a duopoly which inflicts punishment on one side depending which party is in power. The so-called winner takes all.

The entrenched nature of political strongholds has denied right leadership which might come from a small political constituency. The electorate has not been properly schooled on the intricacies of governance, thus it is more reliant on mass media information. That is not bad but requires the additional dispassionate education to the background shaped by scattered information. This should be a continual process spearheaded by the National Commission on Civic Education, NCCE.

The part of the electorate which has been dangling or swinging like a pendulum, only changes direction when they had faced some hardships. The whole concept of imported democracy that doesn’t reflect our peculiar national origins, has created a socioeconomic wedge in the ever increasing environment of disparities, often whitewashed for international public relations.

It is a cosmetic superstructure of silence over a fretting population. It only exemplifies a statement which has almost become an axiom and stands in the name of Henry David Thoreau, a centuries past Briton. He said, ”the mass of men live in quiet desperation”.

What democracy is expected to cure, it is rather creating it.

If we are considering a constitutional review, then the people’s assembly concept must be formalized into Ghana’s democratic practice so that the high actors on state machinery face the public to take questions directly from the people, in whom popular sovereignty resides.