The first year of the Mills Administration is at an end. As expected, it has been an eventful first year: from the yet-again outrageous ex-gratia payments to holders of political office, to the drama surrounding the impounding of cars and other public assets from officials of the departing Kufuor administration, the spectacle of the nomination, rejection, re-nomination, and appointment of District Municipal and Metropolitan Chief Executives, and to the Ghana@50 probe; there has been no dull moment. We also experienced three parliamentary elections, two of them incident-plagued. The intra-party wrangling in the main opposition New Patriotic Party and the ruling National Democratic Congress provided a constant source of political rumours, gossip, speculation and punditry. The appalling mistreatment meted out to certain individuals by personnel of the Ghana Armed Forces in connection with the handling of the protracted Bawku conflict raises troubling questions about the state of respect for human rights and liberties in Ghana. Finally, the Mills administration has had to contend with its first major corruption and abuse of office scandal – the U.K. SFO/Mabey & Johnson bribery allegations and -the embarrassing transgressions of the first Minister for Youth and Sports.

The constraint of space will not permit a comprehensive assessment of the democracy- and governance-impacting issues that have arisen during President Mills’ January 2009 inauguration. This volume reviews only some of the key developments in the first year of the Mills-NDC administration and attempts to analyze their broad implications for the democracy and good governance agenda in Ghana’s 4th Republic. It discusses, among other things, the misadventures of our national security operatives, the persistent pandering to so-called “party-foot-soldiers,” the Ghana@50 probe, the stagnation at local government, the violence-ridden parliamentary elections in Akwatia and Chereponi, and the confusion surrounding the national school feeding program.

The Akwatia and Chereponi Elections - The Unlearned Lessons

Notwithstanding the overall improvement in the election administration in Ghana’s 4th Republic, election induced violence continues to mar the integrity of some of our local elections. Election observer and media reports confirm that none of the general elections held since 1992 has been free of violence. Reviews of newspaper reports on Ghana’s elections in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 indicate varying degrees of election-related violence in the period before, during and after polls in many places across the country. Worse still, the incidence and level of election-related violence appears on the increase. Supporters of the two main parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), have been at the center of the growing incidence of provocations, open confrontations, death threats, mob attacks, molestation, arson, murder and other such acts of sectarian violence. Party supporters, suspected sympathizers, executives and candidates have all been victims of various acts of election-related violence or threats of same. They have been assaulted, shot at, stoned, stabbed, and even killed. The murder of Alhaji Imoro Adam, chairman of the Kwesimintim constituency branch of the NPP in the 1992 election, and the alleged torture and killing of Alhaji Issah Mobila, an influential CPP politician, in the 2004 elections are vivid examples of party-on-party violence in the Fourth Republic.

As is typically the case, the Electoral Commission, political parties, security agencies, the government, media and civil society roundly condemn these violent and disruptive acts when they occur. Election monitoring bodies, religious, cultural and political leaders have offered recommendations to curb the violence associated with our elections and election campaigns. Government, especially its security chiefs, have promised to deal speedily and resolutely with the perpetrators of election violence, all to no avail. Indeed, the violence that attended the Akwatia Constituency election re-run and the Chereponi by-election held respectively in August and September of 2009 suggest, worryingly, that the use of violence and violence-prone tactics is becoming almost habitual and routine in our elections and worse still that the ordinary Ghanaian voter has come to accept it as normal.

The Akwatia re-run
In December 2008, parliamentary elections were suspended in six polling stations in the Akwatia Constituency. Violence had broken out after an irate gang of partisans reportedly tampered with a ballot box. This made it impossible for the Electoral Commission (EC) to declare the final parliamentary results for that Constituency. After some litigation involving the EC, the NDC and the NPP, the Supreme Court directed the EC to re-do the voting in six affected polling stations out of a total of 89 polling stations in the Constituency.

The one-month campaign leading to the re-vote was fraught with heightened local tension and violence. As happened in the December 2008 national elections, supporters of the two parties declared sections of the affected communities “no-go” zones for their rivals and proceeded to enforce their respective threats with complete impunity. The areas in the town of Akwatia, lying between four polling stations from the Lorry Station and the Yoruba Mosque were deemed forbidden to NPP supporters, while NDC supporters were considered unwelcome in the areas around the Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Junior High School polling points. Because party affiliation and voting patterns in many local communities frequently track the local ethnic and sectarian (religious) demography, the danger of such partisan belligerence degenerating into ethnic violence is very real. In the Akwatia re-run, gunshots were frequently fired from various parts of the town in the run up to the election. Two days before election-day, supporters of the rival candidates clashed violently in the centre of town. Police intervention came late, by which time several people had already been badly injured. Even on election-day, party thugs succeeded in fomenting trouble despite the deployment of a large contingent of uniformed police and other security personnel to Akwatia. Security and independent observers reported the arrest of a number of people entering the town with various deadly implements, including axes and daggers, on the eve of the election. The offices of the two parties were under continuous police and military protection.

On the day of the voting, Tuesday, 18th August, 2009, sporadic fighting broke out in places where rival party agents “defended” their respective “strongholds” against what they considered infiltration or trespass by ‘stranger’ voters suspected to belong to the opposing side. Party polling agents intimidated Electoral Commission polling staff into allowing unqualified persons to vote. There was a report of a high-ranking NPP Executive, who was serving as a polling agent, being openly harassed and even prevented from carrying out his duties as a polling agent of one of the candidates. Boisterous confrontations between rival party activists characterized voting in nearly all polling stations. A number of persons were caught attempting to vote more than once or impersonating other voters. There were several incidents of the use of fake voters’ identification cards. Many voters had gone to the stations with their official ID cards to vote only to discover that other persons had fraudulently used fake IDs to vote in their names already. A couple of voters were also arrested attempting to stuff ballot boxes with several pre-marked ballot papers. Indeed some voters succeeded in introducing a number of fake ballot papers into the ballot box in two of the polling stations.

Chereponi
The untimely death of Hon. Doris Seidu a few months after the start of her second term as the Member of Parliament for the Chereponi constituency of the Northern region necessitated the 29th September 2009 by-election in the constituency. From a technical standpoint, the general quality of the Chereponi by-election, including the election-day procedure, was an improvement on Akwatia. But the Chereponi by-election earned its place in the annals of poll-related violence in Ghana’s 4th Republic when defenceless citizens were fired upon by an alleged state security agent in a feckless attempt at crowd control.

This incident seemed to have galvanized the police and other stakeholders into action to ensure that the voting process on election-day was largely hitch-free and peaceful. Security was tight in the Chereponi township, at the polling stations and in many communities in the less accessible areas of the constituency. Teams of between 5 and 20 police guards (often armed), were deployed in and around the polling stations. Large deployments of police security escorted electoral materials and personnel to each and every polling station on the eve of the polls. The resolve of the ordinary citizens of the Chereponi Constituency also proved extremely helpful in securing a fairly incident-free polling day. They chased away from the constituency violent party thugs, many of whom were believed to have been mobilized from outside the constituency.

The two “minor” elections confirm, once again, the need for Ghana to confront the spectre of violence that has haunted its elections since 1992. They underscore the need to acknowledge the truth we would much rather avoid, namely, that partisan violence is becoming a routine part of election and campaigning in certain communities across the country, and that this poses a grave danger to social peace in the country in election periods. Our tendency to indulge in self-congratulatory celebration of the “the net result” of the conduct of our elections as peaceful and successful causes us to ignore the troubling and rising incidence of violence and communal tension that attends elections around the country, some of which, in the most recent past, could easily have triggered chaos on a much larger scale and undermined the integrity of the general elections.

It is instructive to note that both Chereponi and Akwatia polls covered relatively small areas – only one constituency in the case of Chereponi, and only part of the Constituency in the case of Akwatia. Moreover, they took place within a year after we had experienced a general election filled with extreme tension, intimidation and violence, with clear ethnic undertones.

The developments in Akwatia and Chereponi were also noteworthy also because they occurred in spite of pious promises from the leadership of the rival parties, Parliament and prominent national figures to ensure peaceful and violence-free election. Moreover, the assurances were given despite the fact that key stakeholders have known for a long time that prevailing national and local level election security arrangements, especially those around DISEC and REGSEC, are inadequate and egregiously inequitable. Indeed, the widespread belief by the local residents of Chereponi that the violence and political intolerance witnessed prior to the bye-election had been imported into that Constituency by politicians from outside of the Constituency constitutes a huge indictment on the integrity of our political class.

After five successive general elections and a number of by-elections, it is has become abundantly clear that the commitment of the leadership of Ghanaian political parties, or at least elements within it to the idea that freely and fairly conducted elections are inherently good and desirable , is extremely weak. They tend to see fairness in elections in primarily opportunistic terms: a convenience where it would not interfere with victory, but something to be jettisoned in favour of a foul alternative if it cannot guarantee access to power. In this regard, our parties and party leadership readily reward and/or shield ‘foot-soldiers’ who disrupt public elections, steal ballot boxes, maim and kill, all in the name of working for the ‘good’ of the party and by so doing encourage, incite and accord legitimacy to the use of violence as an election strategy.

It is absolutely vital to the future of our democracy that so-called party foot-soldiers and other individuals who promote and/or engage in election violence are vigorously prosecuted, regardless of what party they belong to. Steps must also be taken to identify, name and hold accountable the “faceless” politicians who are widely believed to be the invisible hands behind the lawless acts of party supporters. We must learn not to place much reliance and confidence in the routine promises and assurances of good behaviour and restraint given by our political parties and candidates or in the codes of conduct that our parties sign and then promptly ignore. Tolerating repeated misconduct only breeds impunity. We must review the Public Order Act, as it relates to the conduct of elections, to ensure that perpetrators of election- related criminality do not exploit loopholes in the law to circumvent the efforts of the security agencies to ensure law and order.

The Akwatia the Chereponi polls provide sober lessons and an early warning about the lengths the country needs to go to ensure that the 2012 polls do not degenerate into violence. The lessons of these two elections should not be lost on government, our political parties, the security agencies, the Electoral Commission and key stakeholders in Ghana’s democratic development.

Uses and abuses of the national security agencies

The Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) has been scandalized in the news too many times to count during the first year of the Mills administration, In a move reminiscent of a Hollywood gangster movie, operatives of the BNI entered a London-bound airplane at the Kotoka International Airport in June 2009 and ejected from the flight a former information minister under the NPP administration, using a combination of bureaucratic instruments and physical force. Within the same month, the BNI ‘invited’ the former Chief of Staff in the Kufuor NPP administration to its offices for a series of meetings to discuss a wide range of issues and transactions, including the Ghana@50 celebrations, the operations of Ghana International Airlines and the construction of Jubilee House (a controversial presidential palace built by the Kufuor Administration). Indeed, the BNI appears to have become the principal security agency tasked with investigating officials from the previous administration. Among former NPP officials that have been ‘invited’ to the BNI’s high-walled offices at Ridge, in addition to the former information minister include a former Greater Accra regional chairman of the New Patriotic Party, a former foreign minister, a former deputy information minister and, ex-president Kufuor’s spokesperson).

In addition to this, the BNI appears to be the agency charged with the responsibility to retrieve vehicles deemed to be government-owned in possession of officials from former administration. By all indications, the BNI has taken up this assignment with maximum relish and vigour. For much of the first year of the Mills’ administration, the BNI re-enacted scenes from the first year of the Kufuor government. They have retrieved a number of vehicles from former government officials using what can charitably be described as aggressive tactics – including forcibly seizing vehicles while they were in use, and in one particularly egregious case of mistaken identity, erroneously and forcibly confiscating the vehicle of a private citizen (See Democracy Watch No 29, 2008). The “Gestapo” tactics were scaled back following adverse public and media reaction. (Though the government later announced through one of its many spokespersons that the BNI would resume the process of impounding vehicles deemed to be unlawfully in the possession of former NPP officials now that proper administrative and bureaucratic processes have been completed and appropriate notices have been served.)

The activities of the BNI raise a number of pertinent and somewhat disturbing questions – from both a legal and a political governance perspective. What is the scope of the BNI’s subject-matter jurisdiction? How is “national security” to be distinguished from “regime security”? Is the BNI not subject to the provision of article 296(c) of the Constitution requiring public agencies to publish the rules, regulations and procedures regarding how they shall exercise their discretionary authority? What is the legal import of an “invitation” to the BNI headquarters? Can it be declined? Do detained persons have an inalienable right to counsel? When can the movements of the ‘invited’ persons be restricted?

It is encouraging that the actions of the BNI have received a cold response from the courts. The courts, have in some cases, compelled the BNI to respect or restore the basic rights of individuals whose rights had been denied or tampered with by the Bureau. For example, an Accra High Court has ruled that an “invitation” to report to the BNI is governed by article 14(2) of the 1992 constitution – i.e. the invited persons are effectively “arrested, restricted or detained,” which therefore follows that invitees to the BNI office must, on their arrival, be “informed immediately of the reasons for [the] arrest, restriction or detention and of his right to a lawyer of his choice”. The High Court has also recently held, in respect of ex-foreign minister that the action of the BNI in confiscating the passport of a person who was being investigated is extrajudicial, and thus an unconstitutional restriction of freedom of movement. The court therefore ordered that the passport of the former foreign minister be returned to him.

It is important to note that the violations redressed by the recent court rulings involved influential members of the political class represented by well-resourced and formidable counsel. It is doubtful whether ordinary Ghanaians caught in similar circumstances can similarly fight off threats to their legal rights by the BNI and other security agencies.

The BNI is (or should be) governed by the Securities and Intelligence Act 1996. It is part and parcel of the country’s security apparatus, with the specific task of protecting national security through intelligence gathering. There is no rationale or statutory basis for using the BNI to investigate fairly standard allegations of corruption and official malfeasance, matters properly within the competence of the Criminal Investigations Department of the Ghana Police Service, the Serious Fraud Office or CHRAJ. Does the alleged unauthorized possession of an official vehicle by a former government official amount to a threat to national security? Do matters arising from the Ghana@Fifty celebrations, or the shoddy operations of GIA, or the bungled attempt to acquire rice from India amount to a threat to Ghana’s security? Does the allegedly improper award of a $90,000 contract to renovate the offices of the ministry of information threaten Ghana’s economic security? The clear answer to all the questions is NO!

The jurisdictional overreaching by the BNI in the investigation of alleged corruption or fraud involving political figures is particularly misplaced, given the unresolved security threats in various parts of the country that should demand the full attention of the BNI. The increasing use of the BNI’s scarce resources to investigate suspected corruption is indefensible in the face of the grave security threats in, say, Bawku or Yendi or other parts of the country where deadly communal violence has persisted for some time now. It is widely suspected that these communal conflicts are sustained by arms and munitions trafficked from other parts of the country. It is these sorts of dangers to the social peace and stability that must concern BNI, not matters of routine enforcement of the criminal code.

Notwithstanding the judicial push-back against BNI overreaching, the persistent partisan use of the BNI by successive governments, blurring the lines between “regime self-preservation” and “national security,” shows how little our political class and security establishment have learned from the country’s pre-democratic history of abuses committed in the name of “intelligence” and “national security.” Did we learn nothing from the harrowing revelations at the public hearings of the National Reconciliation Commission? What have we done to implement the Commission’s recommendation to reform abusive state institutions and institutionalize a culture of respect for human rights in Ghana?

In this regard, it is important to point out that the NPP-Kufuor administration, beyond putting its own men at the helm, did nothing to reform the BNI or strictly confine its operations to nonpartisan intelligence gathering and national security. Rather, like the Rawlings-NDC government before it, the NPP government, too, used the BNI for partisan political purposes. Particularly in the early months of the first Kufuor administration, the BNI was used to retrieve official vehicles from NDC officials, and certain former NDC ministers or other officials held for interrogation by the BNI, often without the opportunity to have their lawyers present. The BNI was even reportedly commissioned by the government to conduct election-related opinion polls (under the guise of “intelligence gathering”) for the benefit of the ruling party in the run-up to the December 2008 elections. Apparently, this, too, is one of the BNI’s routine activities.
It is abundantly clear that the BNI has become a political tool, wielded for a variety of purposes by whichever party happens to be in power. The exhortation in the National Securities and Intelligence Agencies Act that the Director of the Bureau “pursue and ensure political party neutrality of his Intelligence Agency in the performance of its functions,” has been honoured largely in the breach. Without doubt, vestiges of the ancien regime persist in Ghana’s 4th Republic. The BNI, by its actions this year, has demonstrated itself to be still steeped in the discredited practices and habits of a by-gone authoritarian era. The consolidation of Ghana’s democracy demands that the BNI and other organs of national security stick strictly to their statutory mission and mandate. Moreover, their administrative and investigative practices must be brought into conformity with the letter and spirit of the1992 constitution. In particular, the BNI and other security agencies must comply with article 296(c) of the constitution, which requires that statutory agencies vested with discretionary power publish, for the benefit of persons who must deal with such agencies, the rules, regulations and procedures governing the operations of the agency in question, and further that such rules and regulations must be “fair and candid,” “not be arbitrary, capricious or biased,” and “be in accordance with due process of law.”

Regrettably, significant segments of the Ghanaian public seem tolerant of the routine violation of the rights of suspects by the security agencies. Recently, while some Ghanaians were justifiably shocked that soldiers assigned to maintain the peace in Bawku had stripped and paraded naked through the streets certain suspects, a number of callers to radio stations strongly defended the illegal actions of the soldiers as warranted by the state of affairs in Bawku. Several callers showed little concern for the human rights of the persons subjected to this sort of mistreatment. Clearly the deficit of human rights consciousness extends beyond the security agencies to the Ghanaian public at large. The National Commission for Civic Education and the CHRAJ, in conjunction with civil society and the media, must step up their efforts to educate Ghanaians about the importance of human rights and the rule of law in the building of a democratic society. The BNI and other security agencies are unlikely to appreciate the incongruity between their “methods” and the current democratic order when there are voices in the general population that would rise to defend their partisan, abusive or unlawful actions.

The “foot-soldier” phenomenon revisited: rewarding the party versus rewarding Ghanaians

Throughout his campaign and early in his presidency, President Mills promised to be a “president of all Ghanaians.” A more conciliatory and inclusive approach to politics seemed sensible and appropriate, given the intensity of the ethnic and political polarization that attended the 2008 election campaign and the razor-thin margin of Mills’ eventual victory in the presidential elections. There had been signs in the initial weeks and for a very brief period in the Mills presidency that this would be the case. Metropolitan/Municipal and District Chief Executives, for example, were asked to hold over until transition processes were completed, and heads of the security agencies were not ordered immediately to vacate their posts. The Mills administration, it appeared, was going to put national interest first and not engage in wholesale or arbitrary or precipitous dismissals of incumbent public servants or holdover NPP appointees.

One year into the Mills presidency, however, it appears that the promise of an inclusive government has been abandoned. Like the previous NDC and the NPP governments before it, the Mills administration, too, appears to have yielded to the wishes of the ‘hawks’ and so-called “foot-soldiers.” The first obvious sign of this occurred with the blanket dismissals of all the board members of state and para-statal companies, councils and commissions. This was often accompanied or preceded by requests to public officials occupying administrative positions, some of them patently non-political, to “proceed on leave.” In some cases too, they were dismissed outright. Thus, within the first few months of the assumption of office by the NDC, there has been a sea change in the management and leadership at a number of government and quasi-government agencies ranging from the Ghana Investment Promotion Council to the Ghana AIDS Commission.

Given the relative swiftness with which a number of senior party functionaries (senior party foot-soldiers) managed to change their circumstances via board, ministerial and other appointments, it was almost inevitable that the junior party loyalists and foot-soldiers would soon start making demands to be similarly rewarded for their contributions to the election victory. The foot-soldier agitations, at first muted, soon became loud and even threatened to get or got violent at times. The NDC foot-soldiers demanded that their contribution to the success of the NDC in the 2008 elections be acknowledged in bread-and-butter terms. Thus, pro-NDC youth in Accra, Ashaimann, Asuogyaman, Cape Coast, and in some parts of Northern Ghana attempted to forcibly take control of toll collection at public toilets and car parks, and invaded offices of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and the National Youth Employment Program (NYEP), ostensibly looking to be hired. In Tamale for example, staff of both the NHIS and NYEP were locked out of their offices and physically assaulted for challenging the takeover of their office premises. The justification the NDC activists gave for their clearly unlawful actions was simple – they had been promised jobs as a reward for their support of the party in the 2008 elections; the NPP was perceived as having used the NYEP, NHIS and other state social protection schemes as well as local government agencies as vehicles through which it exercised patronage; as the NPP had been voted out, NDC activists were entitled to claim these state entities as sources of support for themselves.

Proof that these actions and demands have actually had some effect soon came in the form of an unprecedented directive from the Presidency effectively asking public office-holders appointed by the Administration to attend, as a matter of priority, to the needs and concerns of party loyalists and foot-soldiers. The erstwhile Presidential spokesperson, Mr. Mahama Ayariga, went so far as to contend that that the Mills administration, in its short time in office, had done more to cater to the demands of the ruling party (by giving government jobs to its members) than any other government in the history of the Fourth Republic.

The administration’s blanket dissolution of state boards may not necessarily rise to the level of illegality (though the legal basis for some of the board dismissals seem questionable and are, in some cases, being challenged in court). Nor is this partisan “spoils system” (often self-servingly but incorrectly justified as a practice that prevails in United States and other older democracies) new in the Fourth Republic. However, the time has come to intensify efforts to question the propriety and persistence of this practice and to nip it in the bud before it consumes and erodes our democratic gains. Must we continue this perverse tradition of purging the public service and parastatals each time there is an electoral turnover? And must party affiliation rather than technical competence continue to dictate the personnel changes and reconstitution we make in state, quasi state agencies, and their boards upon the coming of a new administration?

Interestingly, the NDC promised in its manifesto that state boards would be constituted “solely on the basis of expertise and competence; eschewing all partisan and familial considerations”. But it is extremely difficult to see how expertise and competence were taken into account in the reconstitution of these state boards and councils and the summary dismissals of various public officials when no credible attempt had been made to review or assess performance. Moreover, the “vacant” positions created in the public sector were quickly filled by current NDC or Rawlings-era party functionaries. Indeed, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the blanket dissolution of all the boards was just a crude means of creating room for patronage. Furthermore, the Mills administration is also continuing the old practice, followed by its predecessors, of appointing several ruling party MPs to positions on state boards, with some MPs chairing these boards. This practice of cross-branch appointments renders the MPs and other public officials in question even more susceptible to executive influence. It is inevitably harmful to the system of checks and balances. At any rate, it represents a breach of the NDC’s own manifesto, which states that “As far as practicable, Ministers and Members of Parliament shall not be appointed to the positions of Chairman and members of boards of directors of public sector companies in order to avoid a conflict of interest.”

Of course, board appointments come with prestige and sometimes generous allowances. Their attraction to political and social climbers is understandable. Superficially, they appear to be fair rewards for current (or future) loyalists and/or compensation for those perceived to have contributed in cash or kind to the election victory, or a form of restitution for those unjustly persecuted under the previous government. But as reward or compensation for loyalty, they amount to a raid on the public treasury to pay off personal and partisan debts of gratitude. Worse still, they come at the expense of the running of a modern efficient public administration as they are largely or solely done on the basis of personal and political criteria rather than technical merit and competence. A political economy in which the government robs the public service to pay its partisans has a corrosive effect on good governance and sound economic management. It is therefore important that government positions that are purely administrative and non-political public service positions are identified and insulated from partisan pressure.

It was encouraging to hear some intrepid individuals in the leadership of the NDC publicly condemn the unilateral seizures of public assets and other unlawful actions taken by party activists. Indeed, the MP for the Ashaimann Constituency was reportedly physically assaulted for resisting the attempts of the NDC youth in the constituency to takeover toilets and lorry stations. However, it is also disturbing to note that the calls for restraint and condemnations largely failed to abate the seizure of public assets and other unlawful actions by NDC foot soldiers.

This is not really surprising. After all, some leading members of a the NDC appear to be giving at least tacit support and encouragement to the lawlessness of the party’s foot soldiers. . Some of these same influential actors in the party have also frequently accused the Mills government of “slowness,” ” “abandonment”, apparently for failing to consult them or accede to their demands and also for not dealing harshly and swiftly with officials of the previous NPP administration

All this is worrying enough. But there are deeper reasons for concern. The critics of the Mills administration, both from within the ruling party and from the main opposition NPP, are equally wrongheaded on the issue. The claim by some NDC party executives and members of the parliamentary caucus -including the Majority Leader of Parliament – that they lack privileged access to the President and or the presidency has dubious democratic validity. Neither senior figures in the ruling party nor party faithful should have special access to the president or any other publicly funded entity in a democratic system of government. The right of NDC supporters to access the government and public officials, and to have their concerns addressed should solely rest on their status as Ghanaians and not party membership!

But the challenge the party-foot soldier, party insider and other sectarian demands pose to our democracy and good governance transcends party politics. As noted in Democracy Watch (No. 24, July 2007) “[P]arty foot soldiering is indeed a soft underbelly of democratic politics in Ghana that must be reigned in”. Both the ruling NDC and the main opposition NPP politicians appear to be caught in a web of party insider/foot-soldier blackmail. They make unrealistic promises of jobs and easy solutions to personal and national problems in order to win elections. They give false hope to their supporters that electoral victory would be immediately followed by direct personal and partisan pay offs. They create the impression among their followers that they are shareholders who would be paid dividends upon the electoral victory. NDC foot-soldiers may have gone a step further than their NPP counterparts with sabre-rattling antics that include clearly illegal and sometimes criminal actions. NDC foot soldiers are demanding their pound of flesh from a government they believe they put in power in the same manner the foot soldiers of the NPP had held the party to ransom to register their displeasure over perceived neglect by a party they had voted into power.

The notion that party supporters - whether senior or junior - should receive preferential treatment and greater access to government officials than ordinary tax payers is repugnant and should not be countenanced. Even if it were possible for an administration to meet the expectations of all its foot-soldiers for partisan rewards, it will be ruinous for governance and national development. That government is typically unable to bring to book its party-foot soldiers who take the law into their hands is a measure of the how far we are allowing party politics to trump the national interest. As argued in a previous edition of Democracy Watch (No.24, July 2007), “[T]he persistence of the Party foot soldier phenomenon also reflects the weakness of real checks on the abuse of incumbency and the near absence of sanctions for abuses of public and political office for personal or partisan ends”. The government is in effect saying that party functionaries are not subject to the laws of the land, setting a dangerous precedent with far reaching implications.

The Ghana@50 Probe

In 2007, Ghana held its 50th Anniversary celebrations, but it has since become clear that the celebrations generated some questionable government spending. Shortly after assuming office in January 2009, the Mills-NDC government ordered the Auditor-General to investigate the Ghana@50 accounts (See Democracy Watch No_29 2009). The preliminary findings of this investigation did not cast the primary organizers of the celebration, Chief of Staff in the Kufuor government and Chief Executive of the Ghana @ 50 Secretariat in a particularly good light. The former Chief of Staff objected strenuously to the public release of the Auditor-General’s preliminary findings before the organizers were given an opportunity to respond. He also denounced the investigation as a witch-hunt against himself and some other leading members of the NPP. The government disputed this assertion and contended that several issues arose out of the celebrations that required greater scrutiny, and established a Commission of Enquiry to conduct a thorough review of the Ghana@50 celebrations. Post-regime commissions of enquiry are not new in Ghana. Both military and civilian administrations have established such commissions, ostensibly to ensure accountability for actions taken and expenditures incurred by the previous government. However, such commissions also provide the new government with a potential public relations bonus from the opportunity to inflict embarrassment on the previous administration.

A justice of the Court of Appeal (Isaac Duose) an Auditor General in the previous NDC government and a lawyer from the Attorney-General’s Department were appointed as members of the Commission. The terms of reference of the Commission were to inquire into and report on allegations of improper use of public and other funds; inquire into the use by the Ghana@50 Secretariat of any property, movable and unmovable; inquire into any other matter, which appeared to the Commission to be incidental to or reasonably related to the Ghana@50 celebrations and to make recommendations in respect of the findings of fact by the Commission.

The Duose Commission’s probe of the Ghana@50 expenditures and management exposed weaknesses in Ghana’s system of public management and deficits in our political culture.
Adopting the procedural rules of a high court, the Commission conducted public hearings at Old Parliament House from July 20th to October 29th. The proceedings were broadcast live almost daily by the state-owned Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. The hearings provided a unique opportunity to look inside government operations to see how big and small decisions were made and how taxpayers’ money was spent. The hearings also helped to assess the competence and incompetence of our public officials.

In the course of the hearings, the Commission received complaints and petitions from individuals and organizations who claimed to be owed monies for work done by the Secretariat. The hearings frequently exposed a shocking degree of informality in the awarding and execution of contracts. The Secretariat engaged some organizations to implement projects worth several hundred thousand dollars without written contracts or MOUs. Not infrequently, companies had apparently acted on only verbal instructions from the Secretariat. On the face of the evidence presented at the Commission, the Secretariat had failed to meet appropriate project management and public procurement standards. The evidence also highlighted a key deficit in Ghana’s political and business culture: informality and absence of documentation are the norm.

Revelations at the Duose Commission also made it apparent that the structure of the project itself invited inefficiency. The Secretariat was initially given $20 million dollars to spend without a defined mandate or any clear directions as to what exactly it should do. Bids were invited to determine what activities to fund. The Secretariat reported to the Office of the President, but as the hearings demonstrated, it is not clear who was ultimately responsible for the financial and project-related decisions of the Secretariat, some of which were by any measure, quite scandalous. One of the most memorable exchanges at the hearings concerned the expenditure of $5.2 million dollars on “disposable” plastic Ghana@50 cups. The Administrator of the District Assembly Common Fund (whose outfit had been ordered by the Ministry for Local Government to fund half the cost of the purchase of the cups) defended the expenditure as a “social development” investment. Indeed, among the most disturbing revelations at the hearings was the often hapless testimony local government functionaries provided. They were almost uniformly unable to account for the souvenirs they received and activities they conducted in connection with the celebration.

The hearings also demonstrated the extent of the executive’s almost unfettered discretion in the allocation of financial resources. According to the final report of the Commission, almost $100 million appears to have been spent on the celebrations, but the exact amount remains a subject of contention between the Commission and the Secretariat’s representatives. The Commission also reports that close to $17 millionis still owed to various banks and contractors. Even so, $100 million is less than a third of the amount approved by Parliament, thus underscoring an unfortunate feature of Ghana’s governance framework: the almost unlimited discretion the executive enjoys in the creation and funding of projects such as the Ghana@50 celebrations.

The Duose Commission’s enquiry may have failed to end with the same drama with which it began While the testimonies were often embarrassing, it did not produce a “smoking gun”. Indeed, the final report states that the Commission “did not receive any information of allegations of improper use of public or any other funds.” Nonetheless, Ghanaians from various political persuasions would agree that the Ghana@50 hearings were a helpful exercise. From a governance perspective, they usefully confirmed the persistence of systemic gaps in Ghana’s institutional and administrative framework. For example, the hearings vividly captured the wide and poorly regulated discretionary powers enjoyed by the Executive Branch, notably, the Presidency. It also illustrated how ineffective Parliament is in discharging its duty to supervise expenditure by the executive.

The Ghana@50 saga is therefore far from over. The final report recommends prosecutions of certain Secretariat officials, and the Attorney-General has recently suggested that prosecutions of former government officials will begin in earnest in 2010. Both sides of Ghana’s political establishment will indubitably make what political capital they can out of the hearings. However, a lasting benefit could accrue to the nation if our leadership would act to remedy the governance and accountability deficiencies that the Duose Commission hearings publicly revealed.
 

Hoping against hope for decentralized local administration in Ghana?
There has been progress in many aspects of governance in Ghana under the 4th Republic. Sadly, local government cannot be counted among them. A 2005 edition of Democracy Watch had cause to lament the fact that the NPP administration had “not advanced decentralization in any meaningful sense despite its campaign promise to improve and strengthen local government (and an ideological heritage that suggested they would encourage the ceding of power from the central government to local authorities)” (Democracy Watch Vol. 6, No. 2, June 2005).

Arguably, the NPP made some limited progress. The number of local authorities, for example, was increased from 110 to 170, leading to a greater dispersal of bureaucratic infrastructure and the potential for improved access to government services. In addition, a new regulatory framework to improve the effectiveness of local administration was established. The Internal Audit Agency Act (Act 658) was passed in 2003 to co-ordinate, facilitate, monitor and supervise internal audit activities of the District/Metropolitan/Municipal/District Assemblies (M/M/Das) and the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) operating in those districts under one central agency. The Public Procurement Act of 2003 (Act 663) revoked the District Tender Board Regulations (LI 1606) and provided for the establishment of Tender Committees and Tender Review Boards at each level of public procurement, including the district level, in an effort to facilitate greater transparency in local government procurement. The Local Government Service Act (Act 656 of 2003) created, at least on paper, a separate civil bureaucracy for local government authorities to address the chronic human resource and technical capacity constraints faced by local authorities. Finally, the Institute of Local Government Studies Act 2003 (Act 647) was promulgated to facilitate training, capacity building, and research in local government.

However, the NPP’s actions to establish an appropriate regulatory framework for local government were hardly accompanied by any real commitment to the actual transfer of political and economic power from the central government to local authorities. The passage of these seemingly progressive but inadequately enforced local government laws as well as the creation of these new local government structures appear to have been used largely as a substitute for real progress.

The process of appointing the Chief Executives and one third of the members of the District, Municipal and Metropolitan Assemblies took a decidedly retrogressive turn under the Kufuor-NPP administration. Far from fulfilling its campaign promise to ensure the election rather than appointment of M/M/DCEs, it adopted heavy-handed and sometimes crude measures to secure the ratification of the president’s nominees to these positions. The president’s power to appoint one third of members of the Assemblies was exercised in an extremely capricious and politically partisan manner, thus further depriving the assemblies of technocratic capacity.

Local authority’s capacity to generate resources internally also remained extremely weak and reliance on the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) remains very high, especially among the Assemblies in the northern regions (where DACF receipts constituted nearly 95 percent of DA revenue). District capacity for financial management was also very weak, thus providing a ready excuse for central government (specifically, the finance and local government ministries) reluctance and/or inability to devolve fiscal autonomy to the districts. The capacity of District, Municipal and Metropolitan authorities to initiate, plan, implement, and monitor local development remained weak; with very few Districts capable of formulating their own budgets, implementing and monitoring district programs. In the process, central government agents posted to the districts remained beholden to their head offices and hardly responsive to the DAs. Indeed, many of the positions within the Unit Committees and other district sub-structures remained vacant on account of lack of local interest. In addition, local/grassroots demand for local government accountability and responsiveness was weak, possibly due to the marginal involvement of Districts in revenue generation and the appointment of the political heads of the districts and mayors of the metropolitan assemblies on the basis of partisan rather than technical competence. Thus, by the end of eight years of NPP-Kufuor administration, the DAs remained nothing more than ‘talking shops,’ with extremely weak financial positions and no real capacity to implement plans and programs. The district sub-structures (created to enhance local government effectiveness) were mostly either non-existent or poorly funded.

In sum, the Mills-NDC administration inherited a largely failed program of local government decentralization (and related general micro-level social and economic malaise: fast growing rural-urban drift, expanding slums in major urban settlements (especially Accra), and a worsening environmental and sanitation crisis. But Ghana’s current decentralized local government reforms originated from the NDC’s ancestor, the Rawlings – PNDC administration. It may be early yet, but do we have grounds to be hopeful that Ghana will move closer to her dream of an effective democratic system of decentralized local government? Democracy Watch examines the M/M/DCE appointment and approval process under the new Mills-NDC administration to gauge the prospects for renewed decentralized local government in Ghana’s 4th Republic.

Progress or retrogression? The 2009 Metropolitan/Municipal/District Chief Executive approval process
The signals so far, are mixed. In some respects, the 2009 M/M/DCE approval process was an improvement. Not too many instances of overt manipulation and arm-twisting of government appointed Assembly members to secure M/M/DCE approval was observed. Mills administration officials were rarely heard making dubious promises of early disbursement of DACF and other spoils to induce a District Assembly’s endorsement of the president’s nominees. Public interest and involvement in the approval process was generally high.

However, the Mills-era M/M/DCE approval process was flawed and possibly worse in some other respects. Intra-party disputes and, in some cases, violent internal confrontations dogged the process of nominating and approving M/M/DCE appointees. They were often centred around claims that nominees had been either inactive within the ruling party or had failed to demonstrate sufficient commitment to the progress of the party in the District. A few of the conflicts, and at least one recorded violent conflict, arose over allegations and counter-allegations that opposition party forces within and outside the District Assembly were responsible for blocking the approval of nominees.

The 2009 M/M/DCE approval process also experienced a surge in “nativism.” The ethnicity of some nominees featured prominently as a factor in support for and/or opposition to their confirmation. Some nominees faced opposition where they were deemed to be part of a “settler” community within the District. For instance, three chiefs in the Asuogyaman District protested against the President’s nominee on the grounds that he is a “settler” and therefore could not be counted upon to cater to the welfare of the original inhabitants of the District. A chief in the Brong Ahafo Region demanded a nominee who is “native” to the area and could understand their problems and help to resolve them. He went on to drop hints of a bloodbath, and threatened to go on “hunger strike” to protest the President’s refusal to withdraw the nomination of his “settler” candidate.

As in previous M/M/DCE approval processes, allegations of Assembly men/women demanding bribes, and/or nominees and their opponents offering favours to the Assembly members were rife. Finally, as in the Kufuor-era approval process, very little premium seemed to have been placed on the criteria of technical competence and integrity.

Just as President Kufuor had done, the manner in which President Mills exercised his constitutional prerogative to appoint one third of the Assembly members and nominate M/MDCEs was unsatisfactory in terms of the spirit of the 1992 Constitution and decentralised local government. It was largely driven by loyalty to the President and/or the ruling party. Traditional rulers and other local stakeholders were hardly consulted. And it seems to have paid little heed to the rationale behind the constitutional reservation of one-third of assembly membership for presidential appointees: to help redress technocratic and representational gaps in the composition of the Assemblies. In the process, it is most unlikely that the presidential appointments and nomination to the Assemblies would be properly aligned with expectations and needs of the Districts. Again the broad interests of the people in the Districts appear to have been discounted in favour of those of the President and the ruling party.

Flaws in the 2009 instalment of the M/M/DCE nomination and approval process also underscore the near universal failure of the Assemblies to comply with their Model Standing Orders. The procedures set out in Model Standing Order No. 16 provide opportunities for scrutinizing the nominee prior to the formal vote, and thereby ensure that the nominee is suitable not only in the eyes of the president but also the local people. And yet, the Model Standing Order No. 16 was hardly applied in the 2009 M/M/DCE vetting process. Indeed, many Assemblymen and local government officials claimed not to be aware of the existence of the orders, or thought they were not mandatory.

Older Ghanaians would recall that in the immediate post-independence era, even in rural Ghana, local authorities ran decent schools and clinics, and khaki uniformed agents of the “Town Councils” effectively enforced sanitation and environmental standards. It is a sad commentary on the state of our growth as a nation (and as a democracy) that despite 21 years of reform, local government is still unable to reach the level of penetration and effectiveness it had forty years ago. For improvements to happen in our local government, it is imperative that the political elite stop using local government as another arena for petty partisan politicking and graft and instead view it as an essential tool for development and creating measurable improvements in people’s lives. It is vital that politicians learn that allowing well-organized, non-partisan local government to thrive, appointing local government officials based on their capacity to deliver development goals rather than on party loyalty and political affiliation, and creating the space for the delivery of public goods and services to even the most remote parts of Ghana through local government will come with its own political reward. Democracy Watch restates its position that:

• The Assemblies must make the approval process more substantive and less perfunctory by elaborating appropriate procedures for the vetting of MMDCE nominees. This should include establishing a credible and independent “approval committee” for assessing the suitability of the nominee. In order to foster transparency and participation and complement the “approval committee”, it would be highly advisable for the Assembly to set up a system to receive petitions about the nominee from the public, as well as to hold the session to vet M/DCEs in public;

• Even if the President is not required explicitly by the language of the law to consult local interests in making these appointments and nominations, the applicable powers are still discretionary powers subject to the dictates of Article 296(c) of the Constitution. Ghanaian democracy in general and decentralized local government in particular would benefit from the development of credible and democracy-affirming guidelines by the President and Parliament, through the Ministry of Local Government, to guide the exercise of this discretionary authority. Such guidelines are sorely needed to prevent the sort of arbitrariness and partisanship that is currently demonstrated in the approval process. After all, discretionary powers in a democracy are not intended to be applied capriciously or arbitrarily.

The first year of the Mills Administration is at an end. As expected, it has been an eventful first year: from the yet-again outrageous ex-gratia payments to holders of political office, to the drama surrounding the impounding of cars and other public assets from officials of the departing Kufuor administration, the spectacle of the nomination, rejection, re-nomination, and appointment of District Municipal and Metropolitan Chief Executives, and to the Ghana@50 probe; there has been no dull moment. We also experienced three parliamentary elections, two of them incident-plagued. The intra-party wrangling in the main opposition New Patriotic Party and the ruling National Democratic Congress provided a constant source of political rumours, gossip, speculation and punditry. The appalling mistreatment meted out to certain individuals by personnel of the Ghana Armed Forces in connection with the handling of the protracted Bawku conflict raises troubling questions about the state of respect for human rights and liberties in Ghana. Finally, the Mills administration has had to contend with its first major corruption and abuse of office scandal – the U.K. SFO/Mabey & Johnson bribery allegations and -the embarrassing transgressions of the first Minister for Youth and Sports.

The constraint of space will not permit a comprehensive assessment of the democracy- and governance-impacting issues that have arisen during President Mills’ January 2009 inauguration. This volume reviews only some of the key developments in the first year of the Mills-NDC administration and attempts to analyze their broad implications for the democracy and good governance agenda in Ghana’s 4th Republic. It discusses, among other things, the misadventures of our national security operatives, the persistent pandering to so-called “party-foot-soldiers,” the Ghana@50 probe, the stagnation at local government, the violence-ridden parliamentary elections in Akwatia and Chereponi, and the confusion surrounding the national school feeding program.

The Akwatia and Chereponi Elections - The Unlearned Lessons

Notwithstanding the overall improvement in the election administration in Ghana’s 4th Republic, election induced violence continues to mar the integrity of some of our local elections. Election observer and media reports confirm that none of the general elections held since 1992 has been free of violence. Reviews of newspaper reports on Ghana’s elections in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 indicate varying degrees of election-related violence in the period before, during and after polls in many places across the country. Worse still, the incidence and level of election-related violence appears on the increase. Supporters of the two main parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), have been at the center of the growing incidence of provocations, open confrontations, death threats, mob attacks, molestation, arson, murder and other such acts of sectarian violence. Party supporters, suspected sympathizers, executives and candidates have all been victims of various acts of election-related violence or threats of same. They have been assaulted, shot at, stoned, stabbed, and even killed. The murder of Alhaji Imoro Adam, chairman of the Kwesimintim constituency branch of the NPP in the 1992 election, and the alleged torture and killing of Alhaji Issah Mobila, an influential CPP politician, in the 2004 elections are vivid examples of party-on-party violence in the Fourth Republic.

As is typically the case, the Electoral Commission, political parties, security agencies, the government, media and civil society roundly condemn these violent and disruptive acts when they occur. Election monitoring bodies, religious, cultural and political leaders have offered recommendations to curb the violence associated with our elections and election campaigns. Government, especially its security chiefs, have promised to deal speedily and resolutely with the perpetrators of election violence, all to no avail. Indeed, the violence that attended the Akwatia Constituency election re-run and the Chereponi by-election held respectively in August and September of 2009 suggest, worryingly, that the use of violence and violence-prone tactics is becoming almost habitual and routine in our elections and worse still that the ordinary Ghanaian voter has come to accept it as normal.

The Akwatia re-run
In December 2008, parliamentary elections were suspended in six polling stations in the Akwatia Constituency. Violence had broken out after an irate gang of partisans reportedly tampered with a ballot box. This made it impossible for the Electoral Commission (EC) to declare the final parliamentary results for that Constituency. After some litigation involving the EC, the NDC and the NPP, the Supreme Court directed the EC to re-do the voting in six affected polling stations out of a total of 89 polling stations in the Constituency.

The one-month campaign leading to the re-vote was fraught with heightened local tension and violence. As happened in the December 2008 national elections, supporters of the two parties declared sections of the affected communities “no-go” zones for their rivals and proceeded to enforce their respective threats with complete impunity. The areas in the town of Akwatia, lying between four polling stations from the Lorry Station and the Yoruba Mosque were deemed forbidden to NPP supporters, while NDC supporters were considered unwelcome in the areas around the Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Junior High School polling points. Because party affiliation and voting patterns in many local communities frequently track the local ethnic and sectarian (religious) demography, the danger of such partisan belligerence degenerating into ethnic violence is very real. In the Akwatia re-run, gunshots were frequently fired from various parts of the town in the run up to the election. Two days before election-day, supporters of the rival candidates clashed violently in the centre of town. Police intervention came late, by which time several people had already been badly injured. Even on election-day, party thugs succeeded in fomenting trouble despite the deployment of a large contingent of uniformed police and other security personnel to Akwatia. Security and independent observers reported the arrest of a number of people entering the town with various deadly implements, including axes and daggers, on the eve of the election. The offices of the two parties were under continuous police and military protection.

On the day of the voting, Tuesday, 18th August, 2009, sporadic fighting broke out in places where rival party agents “defended” their respective “strongholds” against what they considered infiltration or trespass by ‘stranger’ voters suspected to belong to the opposing side. Party polling agents intimidated Electoral Commission polling staff into allowing unqualified persons to vote. There was a report of a high-ranking NPP Executive, who was serving as a polling agent, being openly harassed and even prevented from carrying out his duties as a polling agent of one of the candidates. Boisterous confrontations between rival party activists characterized voting in nearly all polling stations. A number of persons were caught attempting to vote more than once or impersonating other voters. There were several incidents of the use of fake voters’ identification cards. Many voters had gone to the stations with their official ID cards to vote only to discover that other persons had fraudulently used fake IDs to vote in their names already. A couple of voters were also arrested attempting to stuff ballot boxes with several pre-marked ballot papers. Indeed some voters succeeded in introducing a number of fake ballot papers into the ballot box in two of the polling stations.

Chereponi
The untimely death of Hon. Doris Seidu a few months after the start of her second term as the Member of Parliament for the Chereponi constituency of the Northern region necessitated the 29th September 2009 by-election in the constituency. From a technical standpoint, the general quality of the Chereponi by-election, including the election-day procedure, was an improvement on Akwatia. But the Chereponi by-election earned its place in the annals of poll-related violence in Ghana’s 4th Republic when defenceless citizens were fired upon by an alleged state security agent in a feckless attempt at crowd control.

This incident seemed to have galvanized the police and other stakeholders into action to ensure that the voting process on election-day was largely hitch-free and peaceful. Security was tight in the Chereponi township, at the polling stations and in many communities in the less accessible areas of the constituency. Teams of between 5 and 20 police guards (often armed), were deployed in and around the polling stations. Large deployments of police security escorted electoral materials and personnel to each and every polling station on the eve of the polls. The resolve of the ordinary citizens of the Chereponi Constituency also proved extremely helpful in securing a fairly incident-free polling day. They chased away from the constituency violent party thugs, many of whom were believed to have been mobilized from outside the constituency.

The two “minor” elections confirm, once again, the need for Ghana to confront the spectre of violence that has haunted its elections since 1992. They underscore the need to acknowledge the truth we would much rather avoid, namely, that partisan violence is becoming a routine part of election and campaigning in certain communities across the country, and that this poses a grave danger to social peace in the country in election periods. Our tendency to indulge in self-congratulatory celebration of the “the net result” of the conduct of our elections as peaceful and successful causes us to ignore the troubling and rising incidence of violence and communal tension that attends elections around the country, some of which, in the most recent past, could easily have triggered chaos on a much larger scale and undermined the integrity of the general elections.

It is instructive to note that both Chereponi and Akwatia polls covered relatively small areas – only one constituency in the case of Chereponi, and only part of the Constituency in the case of Akwatia. Moreover, they took place within a year after we had experienced a general election filled with extreme tension, intimidation and violence, with clear ethnic undertones.

The developments in Akwatia and Chereponi were also noteworthy also because they occurred in spite of pious promises from the leadership of the rival parties, Parliament and prominent national figures to ensure peaceful and violence-free election. Moreover, the assurances were given despite the fact that key stakeholders have known for a long time that prevailing national and local level election security arrangements, especially those around DISEC and REGSEC, are inadequate and egregiously inequitable. Indeed, the widespread belief by the local residents of Chereponi that the violence and political intolerance witnessed prior to the bye-election had been imported into that Constituency by politicians from outside of the Constituency constitutes a huge indictment on the integrity of our political class.

After five successive general elections and a number of by-elections, it is has become abundantly clear that the commitment of the leadership of Ghanaian political parties, or at least elements within it to the idea that freely and fairly conducted elections are inherently good and desirable , is extremely weak. They tend to see fairness in elections in primarily opportunistic terms: a convenience where it would not interfere with victory, but something to be jettisoned in favour of a foul alternative if it cannot guarantee access to power. In this regard, our parties and party leadership readily reward and/or shield ‘foot-soldiers’ who disrupt public elections, steal ballot boxes, maim and kill, all in the name of working for the ‘good’ of the party and by so doing encourage, incite and accord legitimacy to the use of violence as an election strategy.

It is absolutely vital to the future of our democracy that so-called party foot-soldiers and other individuals who promote and/or engage in election violence are vigorously prosecuted, regardless of what party they belong to. Steps must also be taken to identify, name and hold accountable the “faceless” politicians who are widely believed to be the invisible hands behind the lawless acts of party supporters. We must learn not to place much reliance and confidence in the routine promises and assurances of good behaviour and restraint given by our political parties and candidates or in the codes of conduct that our parties sign and then promptly ignore. Tolerating repeated misconduct only breeds impunity. We must review the Public Order Act, as it relates to the conduct of elections, to ensure that perpetrators of election- related criminality do not exploit loopholes in the law to circumvent the efforts of the security agencies to ensure law and order.

The Akwatia the Chereponi polls provide sober lessons and an early warning about the lengths the country needs to go to ensure that the 2012 polls do not degenerate into violence. The lessons of these two elections should not be lost on government, our political parties, the security agencies, the Electoral Commission and key stakeholders in Ghana’s democratic development.

Uses and abuses of the national security agencies

The Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) has been scandalized in the news too many times to count during the first year of the Mills administration, In a move reminiscent of a Hollywood gangster movie, operatives of the BNI entered a London-bound airplane at the Kotoka International Airport in June 2009 and ejected from the flight a former information minister under the NPP administration, using a combination of bureaucratic instruments and physical force. Within the same month, the BNI ‘invited’ the former Chief of Staff in the Kufuor NPP administration to its offices for a series of meetings to discuss a wide range of issues and transactions, including the Ghana@50 celebrations, the operations of Ghana International Airlines and the construction of Jubilee House (a controversial presidential palace built by the Kufuor Administration). Indeed, the BNI appears to have become the principal security agency tasked with investigating officials from the previous administration. Among former NPP officials that have been ‘invited’ to the BNI’s high-walled offices at Ridge, in addition to the former information minister include a former Greater Accra regional chairman of the New Patriotic Party, a former foreign minister, a former deputy information minister and, ex-president Kufuor’s spokesperson).

In addition to this, the BNI appears to be the agency charged with the responsibility to retrieve vehicles deemed to be government-owned in possession of officials from former administration. By all indications, the BNI has taken up this assignment with maximum relish and vigour. For much of the first year of the Mills’ administration, the BNI re-enacted scenes from the first year of the Kufuor government. They have retrieved a number of vehicles from former government officials using what can charitably be described as aggressive tactics – including forcibly seizing vehicles while they were in use, and in one particularly egregious case of mistaken identity, erroneously and forcibly confiscating the vehicle of a private citizen (See Democracy Watch No 29, 2008). The “Gestapo” tactics were scaled back following adverse public and media reaction. (Though the government later announced through one of its many spokespersons that the BNI would resume the process of impounding vehicles deemed to be unlawfully in the possession of former NPP officials now that proper administrative and bureaucratic processes have been completed and appropriate notices have been served.)

The activities of the BNI raise a number of pertinent and somewhat disturbing questions – from both a legal and a political governance perspective. What is the scope of the BNI’s subject-matter jurisdiction? How is “national security” to be distinguished from “regime security”? Is the BNI not subject to the provision of article 296(c) of the Constitution requiring public agencies to publish the rules, regulations and procedures regarding how they shall exercise their discretionary authority? What is the legal import of an “invitation” to the BNI headquarters? Can it be declined? Do detained persons have an inalienable right to counsel? When can the movements of the ‘invited’ persons be restricted?

It is encouraging that the actions of the BNI have received a cold response from the courts. The courts, have in some cases, compelled the BNI to respect or restore the basic rights of individuals whose rights had been denied or tampered with by the Bureau. For example, an Accra High Court has ruled that an “invitation” to report to the BNI is governed by article 14(2) of the 1992 constitution – i.e. the invited persons are effectively “arrested, restricted or detained,” which therefore follows that invitees to the BNI office must, on their arrival, be “informed immediately of the reasons for [the] arrest, restriction or detention and of his right to a lawyer of his choice”. The High Court has also recently held, in respect of ex-foreign minister that the action of the BNI in confiscating the passport of a person who was being investigated is extrajudicial, and thus an unconstitutional restriction of freedom of movement. The court therefore ordered that the passport of the former foreign minister be returned to him.

It is important to note that the violations redressed by the recent court rulings involved influential members of the political class represented by well-resourced and formidable counsel. It is doubtful whether ordinary Ghanaians caught in similar circumstances can similarly fight off threats to their legal rights by the BNI and other security agencies.

The BNI is (or should be) governed by the Securities and Intelligence Act 1996. It is part and parcel of the country’s security apparatus, with the specific task of protecting national security through intelligence gathering. There is no rationale or statutory basis for using the BNI to investigate fairly standard allegations of corruption and official malfeasance, matters properly within the competence of the Criminal Investigations Department of the Ghana Police Service, the Serious Fraud Office or CHRAJ. Does the alleged unauthorized possession of an official vehicle by a former government official amount to a threat to national security? Do matters arising from the Ghana@Fifty celebrations, or the shoddy operations of GIA, or the bungled attempt to acquire rice from India amount to a threat to Ghana’s security? Does the allegedly improper award of a $90,000 contract to renovate the offices of the ministry of information threaten Ghana’s economic security? The clear answer to all the questions is NO!

The jurisdictional overreaching by the BNI in the investigation of alleged corruption or fraud involving political figures is particularly misplaced, given the unresolved security threats in various parts of the country that should demand the full attention of the BNI. The increasing use of the BNI’s scarce resources to investigate suspected corruption is indefensible in the face of the grave security threats in, say, Bawku or Yendi or other parts of the country where deadly communal violence has persisted for some time now. It is widely suspected that these communal conflicts are sustained by arms and munitions trafficked from other parts of the country. It is these sorts of dangers to the social peace and stability that must concern BNI, not matters of routine enforcement of the criminal code.

Notwithstanding the judicial push-back against BNI overreaching, the persistent partisan use of the BNI by successive governments, blurring the lines between “regime self-preservation” and “national security,” shows how little our political class and security establishment have learned from the country’s pre-democratic history of abuses committed in the name of “intelligence” and “national security.” Did we learn nothing from the harrowing revelations at the public hearings of the National Reconciliation Commission? What have we done to implement the Commission’s recommendation to reform abusive state institutions and institutionalize a culture of respect for human rights in Ghana?

In this regard, it is important to point out that the NPP-Kufuor administration, beyond putting its own men at the helm, did nothing to reform the BNI or strictly confine its operations to nonpartisan intelligence gathering and national security. Rather, like the Rawlings-NDC government before it, the NPP government, too, used the BNI for partisan political purposes. Particularly in the early months of the first Kufuor administration, the BNI was used to retrieve official vehicles from NDC officials, and certain former NDC ministers or other officials held for interrogation by the BNI, often without the opportunity to have their lawyers present. The BNI was even reportedly commissioned by the government to conduct election-related opinion polls (under the guise of “intelligence gathering”) for the benefit of the ruling party in the run-up to the December 2008 elections. Apparently, this, too, is one of the BNI’s routine activities.
It is abundantly clear that the BNI has become a political tool, wielded for a variety of purposes by whichever party happens to be in power. The exhortation in the National Securities and Intelligence Agencies Act that the Director of the Bureau “pursue and ensure political party neutrality of his Intelligence Agency in the performance of its functions,” has been honoured largely in the breach. Without doubt, vestiges of the ancien regime persist in Ghana’s 4th Republic. The BNI, by its actions this year, has demonstrated itself to be still steeped in the discredited practices and habits of a by-gone authoritarian era. The consolidation of Ghana’s democracy demands that the BNI and other organs of national security stick strictly to their statutory mission and mandate. Moreover, their administrative and investigative practices must be brought into conformity with the letter and spirit of the1992 constitution. In particular, the BNI and other security agencies must comply with article 296(c) of the constitution, which requires that statutory agencies vested with discretionary power publish, for the benefit of persons who must deal with such agencies, the rules, regulations and procedures governing the operations of the agency in question, and further that such rules and regulations must be “fair and candid,” “not be arbitrary, capricious or biased,” and “be in accordance with due process of law.”

Regrettably, significant segments of the Ghanaian public seem tolerant of the routine violation of the rights of suspects by the security agencies. Recently, while some Ghanaians were justifiably shocked that soldiers assigned to maintain the peace in Bawku had stripped and paraded naked through the streets certain suspects, a number of callers to radio stations strongly defended the illegal actions of the soldiers as warranted by the state of affairs in Bawku. Several callers showed little concern for the human rights of the persons subjected to this sort of mistreatment. Clearly the deficit of human rights consciousness extends beyond the security agencies to the Ghanaian public at large. The National Commission for Civic Education and the CHRAJ, in conjunction with civil society and the media, must step up their efforts to educate Ghanaians about the importance of human rights and the rule of law in the building of a democratic society. The BNI and other security agencies are unlikely to appreciate the incongruity between their “methods” and the current democratic order when there are voices in the general population that would rise to defend their partisan, abusive or unlawful actions.

The “foot-soldier” phenomenon revisited: rewarding the party versus rewarding Ghanaians

Throughout his campaign and early in his presidency, President Mills promised to be a “president of all Ghanaians.” A more conciliatory and inclusive approach to politics seemed sensible and appropriate, given the intensity of the ethnic and political polarization that attended the 2008 election campaign and the razor-thin margin of Mills’ eventual victory in the presidential elections. There had been signs in the initial weeks and for a very brief period in the Mills presidency that this would be the case. Metropolitan/Municipal and District Chief Executives, for example, were asked to hold over until transition processes were completed, and heads of the security agencies were not ordered immediately to vacate their posts. The Mills administration, it appeared, was going to put national interest first and not engage in wholesale or arbitrary or precipitous dismissals of incumbent public servants or holdover NPP appointees.

One year into the Mills presidency, however, it appears that the promise of an inclusive government has been abandoned. Like the previous NDC and the NPP governments before it, the Mills administration, too, appears to have yielded to the wishes of the ‘hawks’ and so-called “foot-soldiers.” The first obvious sign of this occurred with the blanket dismissals of all the board members of state and para-statal companies, councils and commissions. This was often accompanied or preceded by requests to public officials occupying administrative positions, some of them patently non-political, to “proceed on leave.” In some cases too, they were dismissed outright. Thus, within the first few months of the assumption of office by the NDC, there has been a sea change in the management and leadership at a number of government and quasi-government agencies ranging from the Ghana Investment Promotion Council to the Ghana AIDS Commission.

Given the relative swiftness with which a number of senior party functionaries (senior party foot-soldiers) managed to change their circumstances via board, ministerial and other appointments, it was almost inevitable that the junior party loyalists and foot-soldiers would soon start making demands to be similarly rewarded for their contributions to the election victory. The foot-soldier agitations, at first muted, soon became loud and even threatened to get or got violent at times. The NDC foot-soldiers demanded that their contribution to the success of the NDC in the 2008 elections be acknowledged in bread-and-butter terms. Thus, pro-NDC youth in Accra, Ashaimann, Asuogyaman, Cape Coast, and in some parts of Northern Ghana attempted to forcibly take control of toll collection at public toilets and car parks, and invaded offices of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and the National Youth Employment Program (NYEP), ostensibly looking to be hired. In Tamale for example, staff of both the NHIS and NYEP were locked out of their offices and physically assaulted for challenging the takeover of their office premises. The justification the NDC activists gave for their clearly unlawful actions was simple – they had been promised jobs as a reward for their support of the party in the 2008 elections; the NPP was perceived as having used the NYEP, NHIS and other state social protection schemes as well as local government agencies as vehicles through which it exercised patronage; as the NPP had been voted out, NDC activists were entitled to claim these state entities as sources of support for themselves.

Proof that these actions and demands have actually had some effect soon came in the form of an unprecedented directive from the Presidency effectively asking public office-holders appointed by the Administration to attend, as a matter of priority, to the needs and concerns of party loyalists and foot-soldiers. The erstwhile Presidential spokesperson, Mr. Mahama Ayariga, went so far as to contend that that the Mills administration, in its short time in office, had done more to cater to the demands of the ruling party (by giving government jobs to its members) than any other government in the history of the Fourth Republic.

The administration’s blanket dissolution of state boards may not necessarily rise to the level of illegality (though the legal basis for some of the board dismissals seem questionable and are, in some cases, being challenged in court). Nor is this partisan “spoils system” (often self-servingly but incorrectly justified as a practice that prevails in United States and other older democracies) new in the Fourth Republic. However, the time has come to intensify efforts to question the propriety and persistence of this practice and to nip it in the bud before it consumes and erodes our democratic gains. Must we continue this perverse tradition of purging the public service and parastatals each time there is an electoral turnover? And must party affiliation rather than technical competence continue to dictate the personnel changes and reconstitution we make in state, quasi state agencies, and their boards upon the coming of a new administration?

Interestingly, the NDC promised in its manifesto that state boards would be constituted “solely on the basis of expertise and competence; eschewing all partisan and familial considerations”. But it is extremely difficult to see how expertise and competence were taken into account in the reconstitution of these state boards and councils and the summary dismissals of various public officials when no credible attempt had been made to review or assess performance. Moreover, the “vacant” positions created in the public sector were quickly filled by current NDC or Rawlings-era party functionaries. Indeed, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the blanket dissolution of all the boards was just a crude means of creating room for patronage. Furthermore, the Mills administration is also continuing the old practice, followed by its predecessors, of appointing several ruling party MPs to positions on state boards, with some MPs chairing these boards. This practice of cross-branch appointments renders the MPs and other public officials in question even more susceptible to executive influence. It is inevitably harmful to the system of checks and balances. At any rate, it represents a breach of the NDC’s own manifesto, which states that “As far as practicable, Ministers and Members of Parliament shall not be appointed to the positions of Chairman and members of boards of directors of public sector companies in order to avoid a conflict of interest.”

Of course, board appointments come with prestige and sometimes generous allowances. Their attraction to political and social climbers is understandable. Superficially, they appear to be fair rewards for current (or future) loyalists and/or compensation for those perceived to have contributed in cash or kind to the election victory, or a form of restitution for those unjustly persecuted under the previous government. But as reward or compensation for loyalty, they amount to a raid on the public treasury to pay off personal and partisan debts of gratitude. Worse still, they come at the expense of the running of a modern efficient public administration as they are largely or solely done on the basis of personal and political criteria rather than technical merit and competence. A political economy in which the government robs the public service to pay its partisans has a corrosive effect on good governance and sound economic management. It is therefore important that government positions that are purely administrative and non-political public service positions are identified and insulated from partisan pressure.

It was encouraging to hear some intrepid individuals in the leadership of the NDC publicly condemn the unilateral seizures of public assets and other unlawful actions taken by party activists. Indeed, the MP for the Ashaimann Constituency was reportedly physically assaulted for resisting the attempts of the NDC youth in the constituency to takeover toilets and lorry stations. However, it is also disturbing to note that the calls for restraint and condemnations largely failed to abate the seizure of public assets and other unlawful actions by NDC foot soldiers.

This is not really surprising. After all, some leading members of a the NDC appear to be giving at least tacit support and encouragement to the lawlessness of the party’s foot soldiers. . Some of these same influential actors in the party have also frequently accused the Mills government of “slowness,” ” “abandonment”, apparently for failing to consult them or accede to their demands and also for not dealing harshly and swiftly with officials of the previous NPP administration

All this is worrying enough. But there are deeper reasons for concern. The critics of the Mills administration, both from within the ruling party and from the main opposition NPP, are equally wrongheaded on the issue. The claim by some NDC party executives and members of the parliamentary caucus -including the Majority Leader of Parliament – that they lack privileged access to the President and or the presidency has dubious democratic validity. Neither senior figures in the ruling party nor party faithful should have special access to the president or any other publicly funded entity in a democratic system of government. The right of NDC supporters to access the government and public officials, and to have their concerns addressed should solely rest on their status as Ghanaians and not party membership!

But the challenge the party-foot soldier, party insider and other sectarian demands pose to our democracy and good governance transcends party politics. As noted in Democracy Watch (No. 24, July 2007) “[P]arty foot soldiering is indeed a soft underbelly of democratic politics in Ghana that must be reigned in”. Both the ruling NDC and the main opposition NPP politicians appear to be caught in a web of party insider/foot-soldier blackmail. They make unrealistic promises of jobs and easy solutions to personal and national problems in order to win elections. They give false hope to their supporters that electoral victory would be immediately followed by direct personal and partisan pay offs. They create the impression among their followers that they are shareholders who would be paid dividends upon the electoral victory. NDC foot-soldiers may have gone a step further than their NPP counterparts with sabre-rattling antics that include clearly illegal and sometimes criminal actions. NDC foot soldiers are demanding their pound of flesh from a government they believe they put in power in the same manner the foot soldiers of the NPP had held the party to ransom to register their displeasure over perceived neglect by a party they had voted into power.

The notion that party supporters - whether senior or junior - should receive preferential treatment and greater access to government officials than ordinary tax payers is repugnant and should not be countenanced. Even if it were possible for an administration to meet the expectations of all its foot-soldiers for partisan rewards, it will be ruinous for governance and national development. That government is typically unable to bring to book its party-foot soldiers who take the law into their hands is a measure of the how far we are allowing party politics to trump the national interest. As argued in a previous edition of Democracy Watch (No.24, July 2007), “[T]he persistence of the Party foot soldier phenomenon also reflects the weakness of real checks on the abuse of incumbency and the near absence of sanctions for abuses of public and political office for personal or partisan ends”. The government is in effect saying that party functionaries are not subject to the laws of the land, setting a dangerous precedent with far reaching implications.

The Ghana@50 Probe

In 2007, Ghana held its 50th Anniversary celebrations, but it has since become clear that the celebrations generated some questionable government spending. Shortly after assuming office in January 2009, the Mills-NDC government ordered the Auditor-General to investigate the Ghana@50 accounts (See Democracy Watch No_29 2009). The preliminary findings of this investigation did not cast the primary organizers of the celebration, Chief of Staff in the Kufuor government and Chief Executive of the Ghana @ 50 Secretariat in a particularly good light. The former Chief of Staff objected strenuously to the public release of the Auditor-General’s preliminary findings before the organizers were given an opportunity to respond. He also denounced the investigation as a witch-hunt against himself and some other leading members of the NPP. The government disputed this assertion and contended that several issues arose out of the celebrations that required greater scrutiny, and established a Commission of Enquiry to conduct a thorough review of the Ghana@50 celebrations. Post-regime commissions of enquiry are not new in Ghana. Both military and civilian administrations have established such commissions, ostensibly to ensure accountability for actions taken and expenditures incurred by the previous government. However, such commissions also provide the new government with a potential public relations bonus from the opportunity to inflict embarrassment on the previous administration.

A justice of the Court of Appeal (Isaac Duose) an Auditor General in the previous NDC government and a lawyer from the Attorney-General’s Department were appointed as members of the Commission. The terms of reference of the Commission were to inquire into and report on allegations of improper use of public and other funds; inquire into the use by the Ghana@50 Secretariat of any property, movable and unmovable; inquire into any other matter, which appeared to the Commission to be incidental to or reasonably related to the Ghana@50 celebrations and to make recommendations in respect of the findings of fact by the Commission.

The Duose Commission’s probe of the Ghana@50 expenditures and management exposed weaknesses in Ghana’s system of public management and deficits in our political culture.
Adopting the procedural rules of a high court, the Commission conducted public hearings at Old Parliament House from July 20th to October 29th. The proceedings were broadcast live almost daily by the state-owned Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. The hearings provided a unique opportunity to look inside government operations to see how big and small decisions were made and how taxpayers’ money was spent. The hearings also helped to assess the competence and incompetence of our public officials.

In the course of the hearings, the Commission received complaints and petitions from individuals and organizations who claimed to be owed monies for work done by the Secretariat. The hearings frequently exposed a shocking degree of informality in the awarding and execution of contracts. The Secretariat engaged some organizations to implement projects worth several hundred thousand dollars without written contracts or MOUs. Not infrequently, companies had apparently acted on only verbal instructions from the Secretariat. On the face of the evidence presented at the Commission, the Secretariat had failed to meet appropriate project management and public procurement standards. The evidence also highlighted a key deficit in Ghana’s political and business culture: informality and absence of documentation are the norm.

Revelations at the Duose Commission also made it apparent that the structure of the project itself invited inefficiency. The Secretariat was initially given $20 million dollars to spend without a defined mandate or any clear directions as to what exactly it should do. Bids were invited to determine what activities to fund. The Secretariat reported to the Office of the President, but as the hearings demonstrated, it is not clear who was ultimately responsible for the financial and project-related decisions of the Secretariat, some of which were by any measure, quite scandalous. One of the most memorable exchanges at the hearings concerned the expenditure of $5.2 million dollars on “disposable” plastic Ghana@50 cups. The Administrator of the District Assembly Common Fund (whose outfit had been ordered by the Ministry for Local Government to fund half the cost of the purchase of the cups) defended the expenditure as a “social development” investment. Indeed, among the most disturbing revelations at the hearings was the often hapless testimony local government functionaries provided. They were almost uniformly unable to account for the souvenirs they received and activities they conducted in connection with the celebration.

The hearings also demonstrated the extent of the executive’s almost unfettered discretion in the allocation of financial resources. According to the final report of the Commission, almost $100 million appears to have been spent on the celebrations, but the exact amount remains a subject of contention between the Commission and the Secretariat’s representatives. The Commission also reports that close to $17 millionis still owed to various banks and contractors. Even so, $100 million is less than a third of the amount approved by Parliament, thus underscoring an unfortunate feature of Ghana’s governance framework: the almost unlimited discretion the executive enjoys in the creation and funding of projects such as the Ghana@50 celebrations.

The Duose Commission’s enquiry may have failed to end with the same drama with which it began While the testimonies were often embarrassing, it did not produce a “smoking gun”. Indeed, the final report states that the Commission “did not receive any information of allegations of improper use of public or any other funds.” Nonetheless, Ghanaians from various political persuasions would agree that the Ghana@50 hearings were a helpful exercise. From a governance perspective, they usefully confirmed the persistence of systemic gaps in Ghana’s institutional and administrative framework. For example, the hearings vividly captured the wide and poorly regulated discretionary powers enjoyed by the Executive Branch, notably, the Presidency. It also illustrated how ineffective Parliament is in discharging its duty to supervise expenditure by the executive.

The Ghana@50 saga is therefore far from over. The final report recommends prosecutions of certain Secretariat officials, and the Attorney-General has recently suggested that prosecutions of former government officials will begin in earnest in 2010. Both sides of Ghana’s political establishment will indubitably make what political capital they can out of the hearings. However, a lasting benefit could accrue to the nation if our leadership would act to remedy the governance and accountability deficiencies that the Duose Commission hearings publicly revealed.
 

Hoping against hope for decentralized local administration in Ghana?
There has been progress in many aspects of governance in Ghana under the 4th Republic. Sadly, local government cannot be counted among them. A 2005 edition of Democracy Watch had cause to lament the fact that the NPP administration had “not advanced decentralization in any meaningful sense despite its campaign promise to improve and strengthen local government (and an ideological heritage that suggested they would encourage the ceding of power from the central government to local authorities)” (Democracy Watch Vol. 6, No. 2, June 2005).

Arguably, the NPP made some limited progress. The number of local authorities, for example, was increased from 110 to 170, leading to a greater dispersal of bureaucratic infrastructure and the potential for improved access to government services. In addition, a new regulatory framework to improve the effectiveness of local administration was established. The Internal Audit Agency Act (Act 658) was passed in 2003 to co-ordinate, facilitate, monitor and supervise internal audit activities of the District/Metropolitan/Municipal/District Assemblies (M/M/Das) and the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) operating in those districts under one central agency. The Public Procurement Act of 2003 (Act 663) revoked the District Tender Board Regulations (LI 1606) and provided for the establishment of Tender Committees and Tender Review Boards at each level of public procurement, including the district level, in an effort to facilitate greater transparency in local government procurement. The Local Government Service Act (Act 656 of 2003) created, at least on paper, a separate civil bureaucracy for local government authorities to address the chronic human resource and technical capacity constraints faced by local authorities. Finally, the Institute of Local Government Studies Act 2003 (Act 647) was promulgated to facilitate training, capacity building, and research in local government.

However, the NPP’s actions to establish an appropriate regulatory framework for local government were hardly accompanied by any real commitment to the actual transfer of political and economic power from the central government to local authorities. The passage of these seemingly progressive but inadequately enforced local government laws as well as the creation of these new local government structures appear to have been used largely as a substitute for real progress.

The process of appointing the Chief Executives and one third of the members of the District, Municipal and Metropolitan Assemblies took a decidedly retrogressive turn under the Kufuor-NPP administration. Far from fulfilling its campaign promise to ensure the election rather than appointment of M/M/DCEs, it adopted heavy-handed and sometimes crude measures to secure the ratification of the president’s nominees to these positions. The president’s power to appoint one third of members of the Assemblies was exercised in an extremely capricious and politically partisan manner, thus further depriving the assemblies of technocratic capacity.

Local authority’s capacity to generate resources internally also remained extremely weak and reliance on the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) remains very high, especially among the Assemblies in the northern regions (where DACF receipts constituted nearly 95 percent of DA revenue). District capacity for financial management was also very weak, thus providing a ready excuse for central government (specifically, the finance and local government ministries) reluctance and/or inability to devolve fiscal autonomy to the districts. The capacity of District, Municipal and Metropolitan authorities to initiate, plan, implement, and monitor local development remained weak; with very few Districts capable of formulating their own budgets, implementing and monitoring district programs. In the process, central government agents posted to the districts remained beholden to their head offices and hardly responsive to the DAs. Indeed, many of the positions within the Unit Committees and other district sub-structures remained vacant on account of lack of local interest. In addition, local/grassroots demand for local government accountability and responsiveness was weak, possibly due to the marginal involvement of Districts in revenue generation and the appointment of the political heads of the districts and mayors of the metropolitan assemblies on the basis of partisan rather than technical competence. Thus, by the end of eight years of NPP-Kufuor administration, the DAs remained nothing more than ‘talking shops,’ with extremely weak financial positions and no real capacity to implement plans and programs. The district sub-structures (created to enhance local government effectiveness) were mostly either non-existent or poorly funded.

In sum, the Mills-NDC administration inherited a largely failed program of local government decentralization (and related general micro-level social and economic malaise: fast growing rural-urban drift, expanding slums in major urban settlements (especially Accra), and a worsening environmental and sanitation crisis. But Ghana’s current decentralized local government reforms originated from the NDC’s ancestor, the Rawlings – PNDC administration. It may be early yet, but do we have grounds to be hopeful that Ghana will move closer to her dream of an effective democratic system of decentralized local government? Democracy Watch examines the M/M/DCE appointment and approval process under the new Mills-NDC administration to gauge the prospects for renewed decentralized local government in Ghana’s 4th Republic.

Progress or retrogression? The 2009 Metropolitan/Municipal/District Chief Executive approval process
The signals so far, are mixed. In some respects, the 2009 M/M/DCE approval process was an improvement. Not too many instances of overt manipulation and arm-twisting of government appointed Assembly members to secure M/M/DCE approval was observed. Mills administration officials were rarely heard making dubious promises of early disbursement of DACF and other spoils to induce a District Assembly’s endorsement of the president’s nominees. Public interest and involvement in the approval process was generally high.

However, the Mills-era M/M/DCE approval process was flawed and possibly worse in some other respects. Intra-party disputes and, in some cases, violent internal confrontations dogged the process of nominating and approving M/M/DCE appointees. They were often centred around claims that nominees had been either inactive within the ruling party or had failed to demonstrate sufficient commitment to the progress of the party in the District. A few of the conflicts, and at least one recorded violent conflict, arose over allegations and counter-allegations that opposition party forces within and outside the District Assembly were responsible for blocking the approval of nominees.

The 2009 M/M/DCE approval process also experienced a surge in “nativism.” The ethnicity of some nominees featured prominently as a factor in support for and/or opposition to their confirmation. Some nominees faced opposition where they were deemed to be part of a “settler” community within the District. For instance, three chiefs in the Asuogyaman District protested against the President’s nominee on the grounds that he is a “settler” and therefore could not be counted upon to cater to the welfare of the original inhabitants of the District. A chief in the Brong Ahafo Region demanded a nominee who is “native” to the area and could understand their problems and help to resolve them. He went on to drop hints of a bloodbath, and threatened to go on “hunger strike” to protest the President’s refusal to withdraw the nomination of his “settler” candidate.

As in previous M/M/DCE approval processes, allegations of Assembly men/women demanding bribes, and/or nominees and their opponents offering favours to the Assembly members were rife. Finally, as in the Kufuor-era approval process, very little premium seemed to have been placed on the criteria of technical competence and integrity.

Just as President Kufuor had done, the manner in which President Mills exercised his constitutional prerogative to appoint one third of the Assembly members and nominate M/MDCEs was unsatisfactory in terms of the spirit of the 1992 Constitution and decentralised local government. It was largely driven by loyalty to the President and/or the ruling party. Traditional rulers and other local stakeholders were hardly consulted. And it seems to have paid little heed to the rationale behind the constitutional reservation of one-third of assembly membership for presidential appointees: to help redress technocratic and representational gaps in the composition of the Assemblies. In the process, it is most unlikely that the presidential appointments and nomination to the Assemblies would be properly aligned with expectations and needs of the Districts. Again the broad interests of the people in the Districts appear to have been discounted in favour of those of the President and the ruling party.

Flaws in the 2009 instalment of the M/M/DCE nomination and approval process also underscore the near universal failure of the Assemblies to comply with their Model Standing Orders. The procedures set out in Model Standing Order No. 16 provide opportunities for scrutinizing the nominee prior to the formal vote, and thereby ensure that the nominee is suitable not only in the eyes of the president but also the local people. And yet, the Model Standing Order No. 16 was hardly applied in the 2009 M/M/DCE vetting process. Indeed, many Assemblymen and local government officials claimed not to be aware of the existence of the orders, or thought they were not mandatory.

Older Ghanaians would recall that in the immediate post-independence era, even in rural Ghana, local authorities ran decent schools and clinics, and khaki uniformed agents of the “Town Councils” effectively enforced sanitation and environmental standards. It is a sad commentary on the state of our growth as a nation (and as a democracy) that despite 21 years of reform, local government is still unable to reach the level of penetration and effectiveness it had forty years ago. For improvements to happen in our local government, it is imperative that the political elite stop using local government as another arena for petty partisan politicking and graft and instead view it as an essential tool for development and creating measurable improvements in people’s lives. It is vital that politicians learn that allowing well-organized, non-partisan local government to thrive, appointing local government officials based on their capacity to deliver development goals rather than on party loyalty and political affiliation, and creating the space for the delivery of public goods and services to even the most remote parts of Ghana through local government will come with its own political reward. Democracy Watch restates its position that:

• The Assemblies must make the approval process more substantive and less perfunctory by elaborating appropriate procedures for the vetting of MMDCE nominees. This should include establishing a credible and independent “approval committee” for assessing the suitability of the nominee. In order to foster transparency and participation and complement the “approval committee”, it would be highly advisable for the Assembly to set up a system to receive petitions about the nominee from the public, as well as to hold the session to vet M/DCEs in public;

• Even if the President is not required explicitly by the language of the law to consult local interests in making these appointments and nominations, the applicable powers are still discretionary powers subject to the dictates of Article 296(c) of the Constitution. Ghanaian democracy in general and decentralized local government in particular would benefit from the development of credible and democracy-affirming guidelines by the President and Parliament, through the Ministry of Local Government, to guide the exercise of this discretionary authority. Such guidelines are sorely needed to prevent the sort of arbitrariness and partisanship that is currently demonstrated in the approval process. After all, discretionary powers in a democracy are not intended to be applied capriciously or arbitrarily.