Too Early to Fund Political Parties!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

While it may seem laudable, the decision by President John Evans Atta-Mills to seriously consider the sticky question of public funding for political parties may be woefully premature. And here it bears reminding ourselves that barely three days ago, the president approved a humongous $ 12 million package for the funding of personal automobiles for Members of Parliament (MPs) at a time when our educational and healthcare systems are abysmally under-funded and thus woefully underperforming.

Then there is also the fundamental question of agricultural development. In short, what our leaders and politicians ought to be doing presently is learning to set our national priorities straight. And, to be certain, one does not need huge capital reserves to go about the latter; all that is required are common sense and fiscal responsibility.

In any case, what the political parties and parliamentarians ought to be discussing right now are the practical implications of having their campaigns funded by an already overburdened public. Then we also have to be mindful of the fact that our country, to-date, continues to heavily rely on charitable donations (largely from the West, especially from the G-8 nations) to execute any meaningful development projects across the country.

Personally, I find the $ 12 million executive “grant” to our legislators for the sole purpose of automobile purchasing to be both unpardonably disturbing and deeply offensive. And we have yet to learn of how much the Atta-Mills government intends to earmark for the housing of our national assembly representatives.

In sum, the very idea of prioritizing the personal need of Ghanaian parliamentarians to be able to comfortably drive to work over and above the indispensable need for adequate and comfortable housing for the same group of citizens, is one that gives me the creeps, to say the least; and that is only understating matters.

Indeed, as the renowned Nigerian scientist Philip Emeagwali poignantly observed several years ago, what African people acutely lack, are creative and innovative leadership capable of thinking on its feet within a split-second, as it were. And, needless to say, were I the leader of a major donor nation, I would think twice, no umpteen times, before ceding a cent to the Ghana government, irrespective of which of the two major parties happens to wield the reins of governance. For as one foresighted citizen-critic observed in the wake of the running scandal that is the quadrennial, parliamentary automobile largesse, the self-proclaimed “most talented and best-educated” leadership of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), during the 8 years that it held political sway, did absolutely nothing to either eliminate or even drastically blunt the bite of such institutionalized scandal and downright criminal waste of public resources. For an abject scandal is what the parliamentary auto-largesse is patently about.

Anyway, salient among the details that ought to be stringently worked out, vis-à-vis the proposed public funding of political parties, is that of performance; and it is for the latter reason why I am in full and unwavering support of the idea of the minimum qualification for funding being a registered political party’s ability to garner at least 1 percent of the legitimate ballots cast in any general election.

It thus comes as rather risible to hear the representatives of those political parties that miserably failed to clinch at least 1 percent of the total number of votes cast in Election 2008 huffing and puffing over the quite reasonable suggestion for their outright exclusion from public sponsorship. What these political also runs need to appreciate, in no uncertain terms, is that the proposed funding of political parties is not about a blind and blanket welfare package for anybody who just happens to show up with an insignia, a flag and a name. It is primarily and squarely about relevance. And making oneself relevant, as a political party, implies the garnering of at least one or two seats in our national assembly.

Now, let us quickly tackle the rationale behind the proposal for the public funding of political parties. In simple terms, it is about the drastic reduction in the ability of well-heeled individual and institutional interests to flagrantly hijack the collective national interest, thus unsavorily defeating the very noble purpose of democratic governance and culture. And since on a practical level, party politics may be aptly envisaged to entail a significant modicum of gambling, invariably, it is the two major political parties – i.e. the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) – that are more likely to be wagered upon by those with adequate spare money to purchase favors and influence and do this in a big way.

And on the latter score, it goes without saying that not many Ghanaians concerned about their future well-being would readily bet their proverbial “bottom-dollar” on the piddling and wacky fortunes of such political houses of cards as the rump-Convention People’s Party (CPP), the People’s National Convention (PNC), the National Reform Party (NRP), EGLE Party and the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP). However, more than 50-percent of the Ghanaian electorate on any given day would be all-too-willing to align their socioeconomic and political interests, as well as fortunes, with either the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) or the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). It is as simple as that!

Indeed, what common sense ought to inform the leaders and adherents of the small political parties, following from the foregoing, of course, is the need to coalesce into a critical mass along the lines of ideological commonality. Needless to say, the era of sophomoric and personality-driven politics have fast and far receded into Ghana’s past. “We speak to the wise in proverbs,” as the age-old maxim goes, “But to the simple-minded, we speak in plain speech.”

The decision to accept public funding, on the part of the more formidable and/or major parties, comes with a ratified, or binding, undertaken not to unduly solicit caches of private funding beyond a stipulated limit, beyond whose flagrant violation the culpable party may well find itself being saddled with punitive fines and other legal forms of sanction. In the latter sense, therefore, the public funding of political parties is primarily geared towards the necessary infusion of fiscal discipline in the political arena and also, even more significantly, the drastic reduction in the unsavory incidence of favoritism, nepotism and other forms of corruption that are deemed to be inimical towards the sound pursuit of democratic governance and culture.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 20 books, including “Sounds of Sirens: Essays in African Politics and Culture” (iUnivers.com, 2004). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com. ##