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Ghana Charting the Political Transition
The inauguration of the DAs removed some of the political
pressures on the PNDC, but political ferment continued in some
sectors of the population. So, too, did the arrest and detention of
leading opponents of the PNDC regime. The most publicized of the
latter was the arrest and detention in September 1989 of Major
Courage Quarshigah, ex-commandant of the Ghana Military Academy and
a former close ally of Rawlings. He was accused of leading an
attempted coup and of an alleged plot to assassinate Rawlings
(see The 1981 Coup and the Second Rawlings Government
, ch. 5).
A new phase of the political struggle of the opposition against
the PNDC opened in January 1990 when the GBA called on the PNDC to
initiate immediately a referendum that would permit the Ghanaian
people to determine openly the form of constitutional government
they wished for themselves. In his end- of-year message in 1989,
Rawlings had promised that the government would strengthen
participatory democracy at the grass-roots level. He also proposed
that the NCD initiate nationwide consultations with various groups
to determine the country's economic and political future. These
consultations consisted of a series of seminars, in all ten
regional capitals, that ran from July 5 to November 9, 1990, at
which the public was invited to express its views.
Meanwhile, the CBC issued a communiqué calling for a national
debate on Ghana's political future. On July 24, the Kwame Nkrumah
Revolutionary Guards (KNRG) issued a statement calling for a return
to multiparty democracy, for the lifting of the ban on political
parties, and for the creation of a constituent assembly to draft a
new constitution to be approved by a national referendum. On August
1, the KNRG, other opposition organizations, and some prominent
Ghanaians formed the Movement for Freedom and Justice (MFJ). Adu
Boahen was named interim chairman. The MFJ identified the
restoration of multiparty democracy and the rule of law in Ghana as
its main objectives. Its leaders immediately complained about
harassment by the security agencies and about denial of permits to
hold public rallies by the police.
Debate about the country's political future dominated 1991. In
his broadcast to the nation on New Year's Day, Rawlings outlined
steps toward the next stages in the country's political evolution,
which included issuance of an NCD report on what form of democracy
Ghanaians preferred. The PNDC made it clear that it did not favor
multiparty democracy, although its spokesmen indicated that the
PNDC had an open mind on the matter. The MFJ immediately called for
a constituent assembly, where all parties, including the PNDC,
would submit proposals for Ghana's constitutional future.
Meanwhile, the PNDC unveiled a statue of J.B. Danquah, Nkrumah's
political opponent, after an announcement in 1990 that it would
build a statue and a memorial park for Nkrumah. This was a clear
attempt to placate and to woo both the Ghanaian "political right"
and Nkrumahists of the "left" simultaneously.
In late March, the NCD presented its findings on "true
democracy" to the PNDC. After receiving the NCD report, the PNDC
announced in May that it accepted the principle of a multiparty
system. In its response to the NCD report, the PNDC pledged to set
up a committee of constitutional experts that would formulate the
draft constitutional proposals to be placed before a national
consultative assembly. The committee came into being in May. A 258-
member National Consultative Assembly was elected in June with the
task of preparing a draft constitution for submission to the PNDC
not later than December 31, 1991. The PNDC was then to submit the
draft constitution to a national referendum, after which, if
approved, it was to enter into force on a date set by the PNDC.
In August Rawlings announced that presidential and
parliamentary elections would be held before the end of 1992 and
that international observers would be allowed. By the end of 1991,
however, the PNDC had not announced when the ban on political
parties would be lifted, although many individuals and
organizations, such as the Kwame Nkrumah Welfare Society, the
Friends of Busia and Danquah, and the Eagle Club, had formed or
reemerged and were active as parties in all but name. Despite
persistent acrimony surrounding the management and control of the
transition process, the PNDC appointed an independent Interim
National Electoral Commission in February 1992. The commission was
responsible for the register of voters, the conduct of fair
elections, and the review of boundaries of administrative and
electoral areas.
In a nationwide radio and television broadcast on March 5
marking the thirty-fifth anniversary of Ghana's independence,
Rawlings officially announced the following timetable for the
return to constitutional government: presentation of the draft
constitution to the PNDC by the end of March 1992; a referendum on
the draft constitution on April 28, 1992; lifting of the ban on
political parties on May 18, 1992; presidential elections on
November 3, 1992; parliamentary elections on December 8, 1992; and
the inauguration of the Fourth Republic on January 7, 1993.
The PNDC saw the constitutional referendum as an essential
exercise that would educate ordinary Ghanaians about the draft
constitution and that would create a national consensus. The PNDC
opposition urged its supporters and all Ghanaians to support the
draft constitution by voting for it. In the April 1992 national
referendum, the draft constitution was overwhelmingly approved by
about 92 percent of voters. Although the turnout was lower than
expected (43.7 percent of registered voters), it was higher than
that of the 1978 referendum (40.3 percent) and that of the 1979
parliamentary elections (35.2 percent). The new constitution
provided that a referendum should have a turnout of at least 35
percent, with at least 70 percent in favor, in order to be valid.
After lifting of the ban on party politics in May, several
rival splinter groups or offshoots of earlier organizations,
notably the so-called Nkrumahists and Danquah-Busiaists, as well as
new groups, lost no time in declaring their intention to register
as political parties and to campaign for public support. In June
the Washington-based International Foundation for Electoral
Systems, which had sent a team to Ghana to observe the April
referendum, issued a report recommending re-registration of voters
as quickly as possible if Ghana were to have truly competitive
presidential and parliamentary elections. The foundation claimed
that the total number of registered voters--8.4 million--was
improbable. Given an estimated national population of about 16
million--of whom about half were under age fifteen--the Foundation
concluded that with a voting age of eighteen, the total registrable
population ought not to be above 7.75 million.
This discovery fueled a persistent opposition demand to reopen
the voters' register, but constraints of time, technology, and
money made such an effort impossible. Instead, the Interim National
Electoral Commission embarked on a "voters' register cleansing."
Only about 180,000 names were removed from the referendum register,
however, leaving the total registered voters at 8.23 million, a
statistical impossibility, the opposition insisted. Estimates put
the actual number of registered voters at about 6.2 million, making
the 3.69 million turn-out at the referendum an adjusted 59.5
percent.
Data as of November 1994
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