Election 2016 and Matters Arising

Sulemana Braimah

Ghana's 2016 elections are fast approaching. Yesterday, I read about the NPP in Ashanti region beginning its 2016 campaigning. Too early? Well, may be yes. But you know that President John Mahama, instead of fully focusing on the job, has been thinking about the 2016 elections.

Remember, the President started declaring that NDC will win the 2016 elections way back. He did same during the recent NDC congress in the Ashanti regional capital, Kumasi. So you may not blame the NPP in Ashanti for starting or wanting to start early. They may have been inspired by the president to start in time.

But whether or not the parties are starting too early shouldn’t really matter. What matters is how they go about it. After all, politics in Ghana has become a money-making enterprise. So we should expect those in that enterprise who are popularly called politicians, to want to win elections by any means possible. In Ghana today, politics is not about national development, it’s about personal wealth. I hope it changes one day.

Well, the politicians are desperate to start campaigning now for our votes in 2016. We must be equally desperate to start scrutinising them early enough. Yes, we should. Our politicians should not be allowed to continue to thrive on the gullibility and vulnerability of the people to enrich themselves in the name of serving the nation. Genuine politicians do not enrich themselves in the name of fighting poverty. They rather enrich the poor to be out of poverty.

So as we gradually get into the election 2016 mode, it is really important for countrymen and women to have a very, very critical approach to deciding which party and candidates they will support. For election 2016, electoral choices should not be based on ethnicity, religion or the usual irrelevant physical attributes such as one being handsome, tall or short.

We will have to go back to the 2012 election campaign diaries, files and manifestos. We will have to examine the policy positions, arguments and debates the parties and candidates put forward. We need to critically look at whether or not the incumbents (President and MPs) are delivering on what they promised. If they aren’t we need to ask why, and why then should they deserve our vote again in 2016?

My candid opinion is that the current government is not doing well. Over the last six years, conditions have not improved. In fact, on many fronts and in many sectors, conditions have worsened. But the opposition has also not been serious. In fact, my judgement is that we have the weakest opposition I have ever witnessed.

The NPP has a whopping 123 Members in Parliament, but it’s as if there is no opposition in Parliament. They approve of the loans and turn around to say government is borrowing too much. They support the purchase of Chinese chairs for Parliament and complain that local industries are collapsing. The fail to hold government accountable and say there is too much corruption in government. They trivialise important issues with needless placards, singing and bags of rice. The say the government lacks ideas and offer no new ideas. That is the opposition we have.

When you talk they have a convenient excuse: “As minority we have our say but the majority will always have their way.” Well, that is just a truism because the late Hon. Hawa Yakubu thought us the truth – you can even be a loner in Parliament and still have an influence.

So at this stage, the Mahama government is not doing well, but the opposition hasn’t also proven to be a better alternative. Like our learned lawyer friends will say “the accused is innocent until proven guilty." For those of us who are not learned, but equally concerned about the future of our nation, we should say to the opposition: "Mahama is competent, until proven to have failed." And the opposition has that burden of proof. They must or they fail to pass the test of 2016.

So the NPP or any opposition party should not win election 2016 simply because the incumbent is not doing well. A vote for any of the opposition parties must be based on clear and convincing evidence that, that party will be a better alternative. If a party fails to prove why it is a better alternative, it will most likely not do anything different from the one seeks to take over from. And there shouldn’t be a change for the sake of having new faces and the same poor results.

So to the opposition parties and candidates, what will make you win election 2016 will not be simply based on how loud you shout to us about the problems we know already and are enduring – dumsor, high cost of living, failed promises, profuse corruption, high interest rate, poor infrastructure, and the many, many more. We need to be convinced about what you will do differently to solve those many problems of our dear nation.

Happy New Year.