On Dec. 7, Ghanaians will go to the polls to vote for a president and 275 members of the nationwide legislature.* Whereas there are 39 aspirants for the very best workplace, the true contest can be between the 2 political events which have alternately run the nation for the reason that finish of army rule in 1993: the incumbent New Patriotic Celebration, or NPP, and the opposition Nationwide Democratic Congress, NDC.
No matter which certainly one of them wins, Ghana can be heralded in Western capitals as a uncommon “mannequin democracy” in West Africa, a area whose democracies are at the moment affected by a sequence of coups and long-standing insurgencies. In some methods, that is comprehensible and deserved. Ghana’s two main events have a strong file of peaceable transfers of energy between them for the reason that return of democracy. Nonetheless, below the floor, fragility fueled by Ghana’s political and electoral system is threatening the foundations of the nation’s democracy.
Ghanaian activists and civil society teams have lengthy decried how each the NDC and NPP use state sources to domesticate clientelist networks for partisan profit. A latest report from the Clingendael Institute builds on this criticism by analyzing particularly two divisive ways each events use that contribute to undermining stability throughout the nation: intervening in native chieftaincy disputes and interesting political vigilantes.
