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Ghana The National Liberation Council and the Busia Years, 1966-71
The leaders of the coup that overthrew Nkrumah immediately
opened the country's borders and its prison gates to allow the
return from exile or release from preventive detention of all
opponents of Nkrumah. The National Liberation Council (NLC),
composed of four army officers and four police officers, assumed
executive power. It appointed a cabinet of civil servants and
promised to restore democratic government as quickly as possible.
The ban on the formation of political parties remained in force
until late 1968, but activity by individual figures began much
earlier with the appointment of a succession of committees composed
of civil servants and politicians as the first step in the return
to civilian and representative rule.
These moves culminated in the appointment of a representative
assembly to draft a constitution for the Second Republic of Ghana.
Political party activity was allowed to commence with the opening
of the assembly. By election time in August 1969, the first
competitive nationwide political contest since 1956, five parties
had been organized.
The major contenders were the Progress Party (PP), headed by
Kofi A. Busia, and the National Alliance of Liberals (NAL), led by
Komla A. Gbedemah. Critics associated these two leading parties
with the political divisions of the early Nkrumah years. The PP
found much of its support among the old opponents of Nkrumah's CPP-
-the educated middle class and traditionalists of Ashanti Region
and the North. This link was strengthened by the fact that Busia
had headed the NLM and its successor, the UP, before fleeing the
country to oppose Nkrumah from exile. Similarly, the NAL was seen
as the successor of the CPP's right wing, which Gbedemah had headed
until he was ousted by Nkrumah in 1961.
The elections demonstrated an interesting voting pattern. For
example, the PP carried all the seats among the Asante and the
Brong. All seats in the northern regions of the country were
closely contested. In the Volta Region, the PP won some Ewe seats,
while the NAL won all seats in the non-Ewe northern section.
Overall, the PP gained 59 percent of the popular vote and 74
percent of the seats in the National Assembly. The PP's victories
demonstrated some support among nearly all the ethnic groups. An
estimated 60 percent of the electorate voted.
Immediately after the elections, Gbedemah was barred from
taking his seat in the National Assembly by a Supreme Court
decision involving those CPP members who had been accused of
financial crimes. Gbedemah retired permanently from active
participation in politics. The NAL, left without a strong leader,
controlled thirty seats; in October 1970, it absorbed the members
of three other minor parties in the assembly to form the Justice
Party (JP) under the leadership of Joseph Appiah. Their combined
strength constituted what amounted to a southern bloc with a solid
constituency among most of the Ewe and the peoples of the coastal
cities.
Busia, the PP leader in both parliament and the nation, became
prime minister when the National Assembly met in September. An
interim three-member presidential commission, composed of Major
Afrifa, Police Inspector General Harlley of the NLC, and the chief
of the defense staff, Major General A.K. Ocran, served in place of
an elected president for the first year and a half of civilian
rule. The commission dissolved itself in August 1970. Before
stepping down, Afrifa criticized the constitution, particularly
provisions that served more as a bar to the rise of a dictator than
as a blueprint for an effective, decisive government. The electoral
college chose as president Chief Justice Edward Akufo Addo, one of
the leading nationalist politicians of the UGCC era and one of the
judges dismissed by Nkrumah in 1964.
All attention, however, remained focused on Prime Minister
Busia and his government. Much was expected of the Busia
administration, because its parliamentarians were considered
intellectuals and, therefore, more perceptive in their evaluations
of what needed to be done. Many Ghanaians hoped that their
decisions would be in the general interest of the nation, as
compared with those made by the Nkrumah administration, which were
judged to satisfy narrow party interests and, more important,
Nkrumah's personal agenda. The NLC had given assurances that there
would be more democracy, more political maturity, and more freedom
in Ghana, because the politicians allowed to run for the 1969
elections were proponents of Western democracy. In fact, these were
the same individuals who had suffered under the old regime and
were, therefore, thought to understand the benefits of democracy.
Two early measures initiated by the Busia government were the
expulsion of large numbers of noncitizens from the country and a
companion measure to limit foreign involvement in small businesses.
The moves were aimed at relieving the unemployment created by the
country's precarious economic situation
(see Historical Background
, ch. 3). The policies were popular because they forced out of the
retail sector of the economy those foreigners, especially Lebanese,
Asians, and Nigerians, who were perceived as unfairly monopolizing
trade to the disadvantage of Ghanaians. Many other Busia moves,
however, were not popular. Busia's decision to introduce a loan
program for university students, who had hitherto received free
education, was challenged because it was interpreted as introducing
a class system into the country's highest institutions of learning.
Some observers even saw Busia's devaluation of the national
currency and his encouragement of foreign investment in the
industrial sector of the economy as conservative ideas that could
undermine Ghana's sovereignty.
The opposition Justice Party's basic policies did not differ
significantly from those of the Busia administration. Still, the
party attempted to stress the importance of the central government
rather than that of limited private enterprise in economic
development, and it continued to emphasize programs of primary
interest to the urban work force. The ruling PP emphasized the need
for development in rural areas, both to slow the movement of
population to the cities and to redress regional imbalance in
levels of development. The JP and a growing number of PP members
favored suspension of payment on some foreign debts of the Nkrumah
era. This attitude grew more popular as debt payments became more
difficult to meet. Both parties favored creation of a West African
economic community or an economic union with the neighboring West
African states.
Despite broad popular support garnered at its inception and
strong foreign connections, the Busia government fell victim to an
army coup within twenty-seven months. Neither ethnic nor class
differences played a role in the overthrow of the PP government.
The crucial causes were the country's continuing economic
difficulties, both those stemming from the high foreign debts
incurred by Nkrumah and those resulting from internal problems. The
PP government had inherited US$580 million in medium- and long-term
debts, an amount equal to 25 percent of the gross domestic product
(
GDP--see Glossary) of 1969. By 1971 the US$580 million had been
further inflated by US$72 million in accrued interest payments and
US$296 million in short-term commercial credits. Within the
country, an even larger internal debt fueled inflation.
Ghana's economy remained largely dependent upon the often
difficult cultivation of and market for cocoa. Cocoa prices had
always been volatile, but exports of this tropical crop normally
provided about half of the country's foreign currency earnings.
Beginning in the 1960s, however, a number of factors combined to
limit severely this vital source of national income. These factors
included foreign competition (particularly from neighboring Côte
d'Ivoire), a lack of understanding of free-market forces (by the
government in setting prices paid to farmers), accusations of
bureaucratic incompetence in the Cocoa Marketing Board, and the
smuggling of crops into Côte d'Ivoire. As a result, Ghana's income
from cocoa exports continued to fall dramatically.
Austerity measures imposed by the Busia administration,
although wise in the long run, alienated influential farmers, who
until then had been PP supporters. These measures were part of
Busia's economic structural adjustment efforts to put the country
on a sounder financial base. The austerity programs had been
recommended by the International Monetary Fund
(
IMF--see Glossary).
The recovery measures also severely affected the middle class and
the salaried work force, both of which faced wage freezes, tax
increases, currency devaluations, and rising import prices. These
measures precipitated protests from the Trade Union Congress. In
response, the government sent the army to occupy the trade union
headquarters and to block strike actions--a situation that some
perceived as negating the government's claim to be operating
democratically.
The army troops and officers upon whom Busia relied for support
were themselves affected, both in their personal lives and in the
tightening of the defense budget, by these same austerity measures.
As the leader of the anti-Busia coup declared on January 13, 1972,
even those amenities enjoyed by the army during the Nkrumah regime
were no longer available. Knowing that austerity had alienated the
officers, the Busia government began to change the leadership of
the army's combat elements. This, however, was the last straw.
Lieutenant Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, temporarily commanding
the First Brigade around Accra, led a bloodless coup that ended the
Second Republic.
Data as of November 1994
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