ARTICLE: IS GHANA A TWO-PARTY STATE?

By Ebenezer Zor

Ghana has again showcase to the entire world how matured its democratic systems and credentials are even though is expensive to practice.

This follows the confirmation of President John Dramani Mahama of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) last Sunday night by the EC Chairman, Dr. Kwadwo Afrai Gyan as winner of the 2012 presidential polls to serve his first term in the highest national office come next year.

President Mahama  took over the office as a consequence of the sudden and untimely demise of the late President John Evans Atta Mills accrued 5,574,761 with percentage wide as 50.70% different from Nana Akufo Addo, presidential candidate for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) who obtained 5,248, 898 casted votes representing 47.74%.

Surprisingly this year, 10,955,262 votes were invalid out of the 14, 158,890 recorded voters of which 11,246,982 casted their votes. The rejected ballots is even more than Dr. Paa Kwesi Ndoum’s Progressive Peoples Party who had 64,362 representing 0.59 % for the third place in this election.

The descending Ghanaians made their voice heard when their casted the ballot to whom they felt could to lead the nation to the promising land connected the proverbial biblical Moses and Joshua saga according to the book of Joshua of the Old Testament.

In reality the victory does not belong to any political party but rather Ghana since the country’s fame and integrity are heart.

Interestingly, the two day elections which started on Friday and ended Saturday did saw the entire populace got conversant to the first time bio-metric verification and registration processes across the length and breadth of the country.

Beside this point, the stakeholders can never be write off their contribution towards this peaceful election which normally attracted observers from other parts of the world to vouch Ghana’s democratic moments and history.

But is Ghana still a two-party states or rejecting ballots becoming the third force of the country’s political discourse?

From all indications our minor political parties have a lot of work to do if they want to shake the political landscape in some years to come.

These two political parties have dominated the country’s political landscape since the coming into force of the 1992 constitution under the fourth republic. No wonder the elections have a two-rat-race at the expense of the toddling other political parties.

However there were some challenges which transpired at the polls especially with the bio-metric data collection as a cross-section of the electorates’ encountered difficulties in order to have their votes cast in some of the constituencies.

I think there should be a thorough check to improve upon the biometric gadgets in the subsequent elections and to the smaller parties the need to work.

Let’s be proud and not forget that peace is what we need to achieve a positive shift in areas like education, health, economy, industrialization, jobs and others irrespective of any political party manifesto.