Ghana The District Assemblies
Makola Market, the largest market in Accra
Courtesy life in general (Brook, Rose, and Cooper Le Van)
Although the National Commission for Democracy (NCD) had
existed as an agency of the PNDC since 1982, it was not until
September 1984 that Justice Daniel F. Annan, himself a member of
the ruling council, was appointed chairman. The official
inauguration of the NCD in January 1985 signaled PNDC determination
to move the nation in a new political direction. According to its
mandate, the NCD was to devise a viable democratic system,
utilizing public discussions. Annan explained the necessity for the
commission's work by arguing that the political party system of the
past lost track of the country's socio-economic development
processes. There was the need, therefore, to search for a new
political order that would be functionally democratic.
Constitutional rules of the past were not acceptable to the new
revolutionary spirit, Annan continued, which saw the old political
order as using the ballot box "merely to ensure that politicians
got elected into power, after which communication between the
electorate and their elected representative completely broke down."
After two years of deliberations and public hearings, the NCD
recommended the formation of district assemblies as local governing
institutions that would offer opportunities to the ordinary person
to become involved in the political process. The PNDC scheduled
elections of the proposed assemblies for the last quarter of 1988.
If, as Rawlings said, the PNDC revolution was a "holy war,"
then the proposed assemblies were part of a PNDC policy intended to
annihilate enemy forces or, at least, to reduce them to impotence.
The strategy was to deny the opposition a legitimate political
forum within which it could articulate its objections to the
government. It was for this reason, as much as it was for those
stated by Annan, that a five-member District Assembly Committee was
created in each of the nation's 110 administrative districts and
was charged by the NCD with ensuring that all candidates followed
electoral rules. The district committees were to disqualify
automatically any candidate who had a record of criminal activity,
insanity, or imprisonment involving fraud or electoral offenses in
the past, especially after 1979. Also barred from elections were
all professionals accused of fraud, dishonesty, and malpractice.
The ban on political parties, instituted at the time of the
Rawlings coup, was to continue.
By barring candidates associated with corruption and
mismanagement of national resources from running for district
assembly positions, the PNDC hoped to establish new values to
govern political behavior in Ghana. To do so effectively, the
government also made it illegal for candidates to mount campaign
platforms other than the one defined by the NCD. Every person
qualified to vote in the district could propose candidates or be
nominated as a candidate. Candidates could not be nominated by
organizations and associations but had to run for district office
on the basis of personal qualifications and service to their
communities.
Once in session, an assembly was to become the highest
political authority in each district. Assembly members were to be
responsible for deliberation, evaluation, coordination, and
implementation of programs accepted as appropriate for the
district's economic development; however, district assemblies were
to be subject to the general guidance and direction of the central
government. To ensure that district developments were in line with
national policies, one-third of assembly members were to be
traditional authorities (chiefs) or their representatives; these
members were to be approved by the PNDC in consultation with the
traditional authorities and other "productive economic groups in
the district." In other words, a degree of autonomy may have been
granted to the assemblies in the determination of programs most
suited to the districts, but the PNDC left itself with the ultimate
responsibility of making sure that such programs were in line with
the national economic recovery program.
District assemblies as outlined in PNDC documents were widely
discussed by friends and foes of the government. Some hailed the
proposal as compatible with the goal of granting the people
opportunities to manage their own affairs, but others (especially
those of the political right) accused the government of masking its
intention to remain in power. If the government's desire for
democracy were genuine, a timetable for national elections should
have been its priority rather than the preoccupation with local
government, they argued. Some questioned the wisdom of
incorporating traditional chiefs and the degree to which these
traditional leaders would be committed to the district assembly
idea, while others attacked the election guidelines as undemocratic
and, therefore, as contributing to a culture of silence in Ghana.
To such critics, the district assemblies were nothing but a move by
the PNDC to consolidate its position.
Rawlings, however, responded to such criticism by restating the
PNDC strategy and the rationale behind it:
Steps towards more formal political participation are being taken
through the district-level elections that we will be holding
throughout the country as part of our decentralisation policy. As
I said in my nationwide broadcast on December 31, if we are to see
a sturdy tree of democracy grow, we need to learn from the past and
nurture very carefully and deliberately political institutions that
will become the pillars upon which the people's power will be
erected. A new sense of responsibility must be created in each
workplace, each village, each district; we already see elements of
this in the work of the CDRs, the 31st December Women's Movement,
the June 4 Movement, Town and Village Development Committees, and
other organizations through which the voice of the people is being
heard.
As for the categorization of certain PNDC policies as "leftist"
and "rightist," Rawlings dismissed such allegations as "remarkably
simplistic . . . . What is certain is that we are moving
forward!" For the PNDC, therefore, the district elections
constituted an obvious first step in a political process that was
to culminate at the national level.
Rawlings's explanation notwithstanding, various opposition
groups continued to describe the PNDC-proposed district assemblies
as a mere public relations ploy designed to give political
legitimacy to a government that had come to power by
unconstitutional means. Longtime observers of the Ghanaian
political scene, however, identified two major issues at stake in
the conflict between the government and its critics: the means by
which political stability was to be achieved, and the problem of
attaining sustained economic growth. Both had preoccupied the
country since the era of Nkrumah. The economic recovery programs
implemented by the PNDC in 1983 and the proposal for district
assemblies in 1987 were major elements in the government's strategy
to address these fundamental and persistent problems. Both were
very much part of the national debate in Ghana in the late 1980s.
* * *
Ghana, formerly the Gold Coast, was not a distinct entity until
late in the nineteenth century. Its history before the arrival of
the Europeans and even after the consolidation of British colonial
rule must be studied as a part of the history of the portion of
West Africa extending from Sierra Leone to Nigeria and northward
into the Sahara. This is the region from which Ghana's people and
the social and political organizations that influenced them the
most came. Peoples and Empires of West Africa, 1000-1800 by
G.T. Stride and Caroline Ifeka gives a rich view of this period,
with adequate attention to the future Ghana. So does the classic
treatment by J.D. Fage in his A History of West Africa: An
Introductory Survey. Robert Lystad's The Ashanti and
Ivor Wilks's Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and
Evolution of a Political Order both provide a comprehensive
look at the history of the most influential of the purely Ghanaian
kingdoms, without which an understanding of later Ghanaian history
would be impossible. For the years of European commercial
activities on the Guinea Coast, see Arnold Walter Lawrence's
Trade, Castles, and Forts of West Africa and also his
Fortified Trade-posts: The English in West Africa, 1645-
1822. Other supplementary readings on the period can be found
in works by Kwame Arhin, A. Adu Boahen, Nehemia Levtzion, Michael
Crowder, and John K. Fynn.
Military readers may enjoy Paul Mmegha Mbaeyi's British
Military and Naval Forces in West African History, 1807-1874,
which provides an interesting view of the introductory years of
colonial rule. The third part of Lord William M. Hailey's Native
Administration in the British African Territories provides
exhaustive detail on the colonial period, while R.E. Wraith's
Guggisberg is a fine description of an era when colonial
policy could even have been defined as progressive. For information
on the ending of British rule and the birth of nationalism, David
E. Apter's The Gold Coast in Transition (revised and
reprinted as Ghana in Transition) still provides an
outstanding assessment. There are many books, polemic and
scholarly, on the Nkrumah years. Peter T. Omari's Kwame Nkrumah:
Anatomy of an African Dictatorship is most often cited. See
also Bob Beck Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer's Ghana: End of an
Illusion. Among the most valuable sources on what Ghana faced
in the post-Nkrumah era are those by Deborah Pellow, Naomi Chazan,
Maxwell Owusu, and Kwame Ninsin. (For further information and
complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of November 1994
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