IN DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACY…

The famous American political scientist, Francis Fukuyama wrote a book; ‘The end of history’, nearly thirty years ago. In his book, Prof Fukuyama celebrated the triumph of democracy and the international world order based very largely on welfare capitalism and international cooperation. However, events of the last couple of years has cast a major doubt on this assertion of Fukuyama and other thinkers like him.

A lot of people have begun questioning the fundamental premise of the western liberal democratic system. We have seen a dramatic rise in a brand of politics known as identity politics and populism. This has given rise to outcomes such as Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the rise of the AfD in Germany, the rise of Le Pen in France, the election of Andres Obrador in Mexico, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil etc. This has contributed to a further decline in the faith people hold in democracy.

I was born a few years before the ushering in of the fourth republican constitution in my country, Ghana. So I have had the privilege of living under a fairly relative democracy throughout my relatively short adult life so far. This experience can’t be discounted especially for a continent that is bereft of a democratic culture. However, one of the curious things I have observed in my conversations with most Ghanaians is an increasing trend in the attrition of trust in the belief of democracy as a system that can deliver inclusive development. Recently the popular rapper Sarkodie added his voice to the call for ‘benevolence dictatorship’ on twitter when he chastised the attitude of most African leaders in a series of tweets on the social media outlet.

A poll I conducted online among my friends on Facebook (predominantly young people between 17 to 35 years old) showed that a whopping 48% of respondents preferred military or dictatorial governance to democracy in Ghana. This got me thinking about the future and stability of our democracy. In this short write-up I intend to espouse a number of reasons which shows democracy is still the best form of government and offers us the best chance at rapid development.

It is understandable for most young people of my generation in my home country of Ghana to abhor democracy. Most of us were children when the fourth republican constitution came into being in 1992. When I was growing into political consciousness at the turn of the new century, it was at a time of great hope for a lot of people in rural Ghana that we were finally going to reap the dividends of democracy. In my hometown of Ajumako Bisease, we had just been connected to the national grid. Our MP whose party had won the 2000 general election was on course to becoming a government minister. Well, what happened thereafter is a topic for another day; cronyism, corruption, nepotism and a general breakdown of the moral fortitude of society left most of us young people disillusioned and disappointed. One may ask then, why am I still a believer in democracy?

Democracy fundamentally ensures the protection of the rights of all citizens and limits the arbitrariness of power. As a believer in the ‘market of ideas and opinions’, I strongly believe the best way to achieve economic development is to have a system that allows for competition of ideas. It is absolutely inconceivable to imagine a situation where my right to free speech is curtailed or even suffer imprisonment for voicing an opinion. I have been criticized rather harshly by some of my friends who think my idea that freedom of speech is an essential panacea of development who keep citing examples from China, Rwanda and even Gaddafi’s Libya to buttress their point.

My standard response to such criticism is to point out to my fellows that, respect for human rights is certainly an important index for human development. The idea that it doesn’t matter if certain groups of people are tortured, jailed or in some instances killed for holding certain views is normal as far as there is a veneer of economic development isn’t only treacherous but also baseless at best. I can’t for the life of me believe the blatant disregard for the rights of a million Muslims in China is a price worth paying for any form of economic development. In 2017, Human Rights Watch reported that the government of Rwanda executed 37 petty criminals without giving them a fair trial. Is that what we aspire for? Democracy may have its own problems with human rights violations. It is a blot on the conscience of any believer in democracy that Guantanamo Bay detention camp still remains open 17 years after it received the first batch of Al-Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan. However, democracy generally offers enough guarantees for the protection of civil liberties of citizens.

The seemingly poor economic performance of Ghana under this fourth republican democracy together with its associated messy partisan politics presents a gloomy picture in sharp contrast to the seeming tidiness and better economic performance of some countries under tyrannical regimes such as Rwanda and China. This basically is at the root of most of the reservations about the resilience of democracy as a form of government that can bring development. However, it would be incredible for anyone to conclude on the kernel of democracy purely based on a flawed democracy like ours.

Democracy goes beyond periodic elections and transfers of power between political parties. It is just one feature of a functioning democracy. For democracy to succeed, there must be a combination of factors at play including an effective judiciary, a well-functioning separation of powers between the three arms of government among others. A lot of the factors needed to make a democracy work effectively may be absent in our current dispensation but the solution does not lie in military or dictatorial rule. It is also important to point out that Ghana has already experienced 21 years of military rule and varying degree of dictatorship under the Nkrumah regime. Rather than pander to the artificial lustre of dictatorship, we must rather engage with the aim of making our democracy work.

Advocates of military rule points to one factor in their support of their system of government; they argue that there is generally less corruption under military rule. But, is that really reflective of the case? Let take for instance the case of the PNDC regime that had probity and accountability as its mantra when the junta first took over. Was the PNDC any less corrupt? Did the PNDC succeed in making corruption unattractive or otherwise in their eleven years of rule? In addition to the absence of a legislative body to hold executive actions in check for those eleven years, there was no auditing of government account between that period. The idea that freedom of speech isn’t essential for fighting corruption in Ghana has always struck me as being for the birds.

Indeed, much of the corruption stories we hear about on our airwaves are precisely the fruits of freedom of speech and plurality of media, both guaranteed under a democracy. Checks and balances which were largely absent under military rule are now assured under our democracy to provide credible constraint on official graft and corruption. The opening up of our media landscape since 1992 has tremendously improved access to political information to large sections of our populace. Political office holders can no longer act in obscurity from the scrutiny of the general population. A government of the one or the few isn’t certainly a robust system for checking corruption.

Indeed, democracy isn’t an automatic guarantee of economic development. It is tempting to suggest democracy isn’t a necessary condition for economic development judging from the examples of China and Singapore. However, a closer examination of the political history of Ghana and most African countries would point to a negative correlation between dictatorship and economic prosperity. We have had the examples of Mobuto Sese Seku’s Zaire, Jean-Bedel Bokassa’s Central African Republic, Idi Amin’s Uganda etc. Others point to the apparent success story of Kagame’s Rwanda to tout the assertion that strong-men rule delivers economic development. The question I often ask myself is have we forgotten a similar model existed in Houphouet-Boigny’s Ivory Coast? Is it a sustainable development model for Africa?

Democracy has its flaws and the flaws of our democratic experiment in Ghana since 1992 are obvious to the keen eyes of any political observer. Nonetheless, as I have already argued earlier, the solution does not lie in opting for a military/dictatorial rule. Development without freedom is a mirage justified by only those with the grip on power. Though, we have successfully conducted periodic elections since 1992, it is important to note that effective democracy goes beyond conduct of periodic elections.

Going forward, it is imperative we work on the other important tenets of democracy to achieve maximum economic benefits from our system of governance. These include; an effective independent judiciary, respect for freedom of thoughts and expression, a truly independent electoral commission that is not afraid to clamp the whip on political parties breaking electoral laws, neutral and professional security forces, guaranteed independence of the central bank and security of tenure of the central bank governors and directors. Democracies are usually imperfect at birth and requires constant twerking to achieve the perfection we all desire. Democracy is not a destination but a journey. We will achieve the ideal one day and that remains our best path to economic prosperity. I believe once we keep on this path as we keep working at it, we are not far aware from building the kind of society we want. The success story of Botswana should give us hope…