The real winner of this election is the Ghanaian people

Monday’s general election is fascinating for a reason many pundits fail to recognize: no party can claim a decisive victory.

While NPP may have retained the presidential office, they do so for the first time with what may be the slimmest majority in parliament ever, and while the NDC made significant gains in parliamentary seats, they failed to clinch the presidency.

For the first time since 1992, there is a real possibility of a power split between parties. You may ask why this is a win for the Ghanaian people.

Monday’s general election will stand as a marker for the strongest rebuke of the elite political establishment that has for a long time consolidated power between two political parties and isolated itself from the ordinary class for who the government is supposed to work for.

It symbolizes the resentment and indignation that many ordinary Ghanaians harbor for the way governance has failed to work to work Ghanaians and instead has been used as a protection for the few elite classes of this country.

It is in no uncertain terms a harsh criticism of the deterioration of the legislative and executive branches of this country and how partisanship has infested and degraded the political fabric of this country.

For the first time, many Ghanaians reached out for the ballot and shouted: Enough! Enough! Enough of the partisanship that has made the legislative arm of government nothing more than a rubber stamp body of the executive branch.

Enough of the partisanship that has eroded the checks and balances the constitution expects of each arm of government. For the first time, Ghanaians are looking for a split government and a new wave of bipartisanship to guide our country’s development agenda.

For now, every political party has been put on notice: the Ghanaian people are watching, and they are discerning to know what is right for them. They have shown they will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action and have demonstrated a willingness to choose politicians who serve their interests not the interests of political parties.

This should scare politicians who for long have thought that the Ghanaian voter is too stupid to demand what they want from the government. This election has shown the typical Ghanaian: the farmer, factory hand, auto mechanic, seamstress, hawker, shop owner, truck driver, housewife, is motivated by nothing more than a willingness for change--real change, not the kind politicians have been preaching since 1992, and they have reached for that change.

No political party should be under the illusion that Monday’s election was a victory for them. Far from that, this election was a victory for the Ghanaian people who have chosen at last to reject the political establishment and give true meaning to the statement that democracy is “a government for, by and of the people.” This election was our victory, one we have long cherished.