Ethnicity and political appointments

The issue of ethnicity has cropped up several times with respect to political appointments and it’s not going to disappear anytime soon. Oftentimes there have been complaints about one government or the other packing itself with people of a particular tribe(s). It is undoubtedly good practice to try to achieve regional and ethnic balance in any government, but it has to do with the roots of the matter. Have we stopped to consider the qualifications of these public servants, and the tribal distribution in relation to political parties for that matter?

Undoubtedly our two major political parties have certain ethnic groups dominating and it stands to reason that this will reflect in appointments, they cannot be faulted, in my opinion. The minorities in their ranks cannot become majority in appointments.

We also have the situation where certain tribes gravitate towards certain professions (my observation), this trend is changing but the present crop of leaders doesn’t have that luxury of diversity. This is even the case in the private sector where some ethnic groups tend to dominate certain professions and this may have nothing to do with favoritism but purely qualification, unless there’s a conscious effort to achieve balance at the expense of qualification. Sometimes balance can be achieved without compromising on quality but how often does it happen?

Ghana is a developing country where most of its brilliant minds are in developed countries for greener pastures or for further education. At the level of Senior High School you’ll be amazed at the number of people who get scholarships to study in the developed countries(still happens at the university level) and mostly never return and even if they do, our politicking is too dirty and renders it unattractive to this class of people.

For the above reasons and more we tend to have fewer persons who qualify for certain positions, with certain tribes having the upper hand depending on the party in power.

In the long run, we get unequal tribal distribution with regards to appointments, on condition that government is prepared to ignore sentiments and criticisms, or try to achieve the balance at the cost of probably efficiency. Some of the solutions to the problem of ethnic groups dominating appointments of successive governments are for the parties themselves to actively woo qualified people from other ethnic groupings to achieve diversity. Additionally, all inclusive governance with the idea of achieving ethnic balance could be vigorously pursued, albeit some party foot soldiers may kick against this idea.

Change has to take place and must start with the political parties and the mindset of the general populace cannot be left out. All of us are guilty, one way or the other since we tend to support parties based on tribe, needless to say, there’s the need to shun leaders who espouse tribalism in our society and politics.

Dr. Charles A. Berko canimberk@yahoo.com