Ghana’s latest election has all the hallmarks of a democracy showing commendable maturity, cementing her reputation as one of Africa’s more stable democracies.
This has been regularly marked by smooth transfers of power from defeated incumbents to triumphant opposition following closely fought but largely peaceful elections, the integrity of which the losers had half-heartedly challenged.
The New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress as the two main dominant forces in Ghanaian politics have been swapping roles from ruling majority to opposition and vice verse in regular succession since 2000.
True to this tradition, Nana Akufo-Addo who has exhausted his two four-year terms as the country’s president is set to handover power to John Mahama, the man he defeated twice in previous elections before last weekend’s polls.
As of Monday, the provisional results which the electoral commission is set to confirm suggest that Mahama of the opposition NDC marched to victory with some 57.17 percent of the votes (5, 866, 825). His opponent Dr Mahamadu Bawumia handpicked by Akufo-Addo as the NPP candidate polled 40.88 percent of the ballot (4, 195, 163).
Ghana has long been one of the beating hearts of democracy in West Africa where many of its regional neighbours and others further afield were still contending with a vicious enervating cycle of recurrent coups, political instabilities which had either destroyed or undermined their democratic reputations decades after independence.
Despite simmering political tensions in the lead up to the December 7th general elections, both the victor and the vanquished demonstrated statesmanship, away from casting a spanner in the democratic works which began more than three decades ago.
Based on electoral standards in Africa, it is unthinkable that an incumbent would concede to the opposition just 24 hours after the votes.
It is even more inconceivable that Bawumia was throwing in the towel when the national electoral commission had not announced a single result since Saturday’s polls, leading some Ghanaian analysts to conclude that the body has been beaten to it by more robust election monitoring systems run by the parties themselves.
It was left to the party communication systems and the local media to step in the information void and reveal the results which extraordinarily suggest no disparities, effectively blunting the role of the electoral commission to a proverbial lame duck.
Trusting his party’s permutations, a calm and dignified Bawumia had called Mahama to concede and congratulate him for winning the polls. To the relief of many who had feared that Ghana might drift on a knife edge in the event of a contested outcome, promised to play his party in the outgoing government’s smooth transfer of power to the incoming Mahama administration. Although the 65-year-old had won the popular vote in Ghana, political stakeholders including NDC apparatchiks recognised Bawumia’s starring role in this most enchanting of political soap operas which elsewhere would have been the exception to the rule.
”The data from our own internal collation of the election results indicate that former President, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama, has won the presidential election decisively…the NPP would offer the needed support to the new government in a very responsible way” Bawumia declared.
He added: ”I assure His Excellency John Dramani Mahama of my full support in the transition process. As committed Democrats, we pledge to ensure that we have a very smooth transition so that the business of government will continue seamlessly. The NPP would offer the needed support to the new government in a very responsible way”.
Since his conciliatory concession praises have been heaped in the way of Dr Bawumia, a former deputy central bank governor for quickly acknowledging the results even if it also meant staring poll defeat painfully in the face with the bitter aftertaste that will cause naturally. His carefully chosen words provide the soothing balm for the aching stress on Ghana’s body politic.
Leading the NDC tribute is the head of its communications bureau, Sammy Gyamfi who says Dr Mahamudu Bawumia had demonstrated extraordinary statesmanship, showing maturity, understanding and grace where many would have betrayed signs of undemocratic zeal to contest the results and plunge the country into political uncertainty marked by tensions and animosities which would seep down to rival supporters in the streets.
“Dr Mahamudu Bawumia deserves all our respect for his exceptional concession speech,” Mr Gyamfi adds, describing the vice-president’s conciliatory words as unifying and affirming Ghana’s commitment to democratic ideals irrespective of who was at the helm.
The victor of December 7 himself is no stranger to losing elections. While still smarting from the pain of losing as incumbent in 2016, Mahama had conceded to the winner Nana Akufo-Addo. His sterling reaction to being humiliated at the polls was all the more remarkable when contrasted with Yahya Jammeh’s irascible U-turn after clearly losing the presidential vote in The Gambia a few days earlier. While still licking his electoral wounds, Mahama had the strength of mind to join West African leaders in Banjul in a regional bid to convince Jammeh who had been in power for 22 years to relinquish power peacefully.
The seeds of democracy were sowed in Ghana in 1992 when Jerry John Rawlings shed his military attire for a civilian garb and won the first democratic elections in the country after a 13-year hiatus.
By then Mahama was still a young political novice learning the ropes which would eventually catapult him to lead his Bole Bamboi constituency as MP between 1997 and 2009. He would later rise through the ranks of the NDC and eventually became a successful vice-presidential running mate for the late Professor John Atta Mills in 2008.
When Atta Mills died four years later, the road was open for Mahama to run for the presidency which he won in 2012.
After many false dawns from the 1950s to the early 1980s, Ghana seemed to have returned to multi party democracy for good, putting behind her the topsy-torvy years of military usurpation of political power.
Since then Africa’s second largest cocoa producer has never looked back, holding eight elections prior to the December 7th 2024 exercise.
It constitutes something of a sweet irony that although Mahama had wiped the floor with the votes, it is Bawumia who has been enjoying the adulation of all and sundry since his capitulation, making his electoral defeat not so bitter after all.
By voting out the NPP and giving the NDC another chance to steer the affairs of the country, Ghanaians have demonstrated that all they look out for from their politicians was to take their aspirations seriously by ushering meaningful transformation.
WN/as/APA