ELECTIONS V: TO BE OR NOT TO BE - SMALL PARTIES

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ACCRA 000256

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/09/2014
TAGS: PGOV PHUM GH
SUBJECT: ELECTIONS V: TO BE OR NOT TO BE - SMALL PARTIES
AND THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION


Classified By: Polchief Richard Kaminski, reason 1.5 (B/D).

Summary
--------------

1. (SBU) Ghana has two large political parties, two small
parties, and 6 tiny mom-and-pop operations that exist mainly
on paper. Ghana's Electoral Commission (EC) hopes to cull
moribund also-rans from the ranks of registered parties for
the December national elections. Some of these parties do
play a role, however reduced, in Ghana's political landscape.
Meanwhile, the ruling party will continue to co-opt small
party luminaries to advance its own interests. End Summary.

National Character Required
--------------

2. (U) Every political party in Ghana is required by the
1992 constitution to demonstrate "national character." Each
must have branches in all 10 regions (and two-thirds of each
region's districts). National officers must be drawn from
every region. Membership or symbols based on "ethnic,
regional, religious or other sectional connotation" are
forbidden. Parties must "satisfy" the EC that they meet
these requirements.

Some Found Wanting
--------------

3. (SBU) After carefully warning political parties for
months on end, at regular sessions of the EC's Inter-Party
Advisory Committee (IPAC),that it intended to verify names,
addresses and physical locations of offices, the EC in
December scoured the countryside hunting up national,
regional and district offices and officers. Sometimes led by
local party officers, sometimes alone, officials poked into
dozens of dusty towns and villages in the middle of harmattan
season. Fresh paint and party symbols often adorned
structures dedicated to petty commerce: tinroof storefronts,
small bakeries, seamstresses' streetside counters. Anything
that could remotely be called an office was claimed to be so,
with EC officials sometimes standing in cobweb-strewn,
broken-roofed shacks while party officers baldly proclaimed
continual use by streams of party faithful.


4. (SBU) In January, the EC presented its findings to the
IPAC. To the satisfaction of the two major parties,
President Kufuor's NPP and former President Rawlings' NDC,
both easily met the requirements. Two small parties, the CPP
and PNC, with one and three seats in the 200-member
Parliament, respectively, and debatable claims to national
reach, missed the targets but came fairly close. Other small
party officials sat in glum silence as the EC spelled out
with great care, using color-coded charts and graphs, just
how far they fell from the required constitutional standards
of "national character." District office totals ranged from
zero to seven (out of 110); five of the six other parties had
no national office. At the conclusion of the EC's
presentation, several of the six parties, feeling at risk,
tried to dispute the findings, but their efforts were
half-hearted and unconvincing.

Solution: De-register?
--------------

5. (C) By implication, the EC's constitutional authority to
register parties also encompasses the power to de-register
parties who fail the "national character" test. EC officials
privately express their wish to clean the electoral slate of
these nearly non-functioning parties. Ballots (which usually
include party symbols and candidate photographs) would be
simplified, and the EC would spare itself the trouble of
attempting to communicate with organizations that have barely
a stamp and envelope to rub together. However, in public,
they aver that no binding decisions have yet been reached,
and "deliberations" continue on their findings and
conclusions. Several small party officials have told us that
they will simply re-register, under new names, if the EC
de-registers them. "And what will the EC do?" said one.
"Re-verify party offices? They don't have the time for
that." Whether the EC would allow this is an open question.

Marginal Voices Cherished?
--------------

6. (SBU) Despite their small-to-infinitismal size, the
also-rans do figure in Ghanaian politics. Local media grant
extensive coverage to their Lilliputian doings. Four of the
small parties have tried for some time, unsuccessfully, to
merge and form a unified "Nkrumaist" alternative on the left
of the political spectrum (all told, these parties polled 6%
of the vote in the 2000 presidential election). Petty
egotism, each party holding fiercely to its own name and
leaders, proved the merger's undoing -- with the convoluted
ups and downs dutifully documented in print and on the
airwaves. Any political event of any consequence, the yearly
opening of Parliament, ministerial press briefings, lecture
series by one of Accra's prominent NGOs or think-tanks,
generally includes a sprinkling of small party leaders, who
bask in the limelight and repeat their standard stump
speeches, to the attentive if sometimes amused concern of the
press and hosts.


7. (C) As the small parties squabble amongst themselves, and
make theatrically unbelievable pronouncements on their
impeding victory next December, the ruling NPP divides and
rules, offering senior positions to the most promising and
talented small party leaders. The CPP's sole MP, Freddie
Blay, is the First Deputy Speaker in Parliament. Kwesi Ndoum,
hailing like Blay from the modernist wing of the CPP, has
held several senior ministerial positions, and is now
Minister of Energy. UGM presidential candidate Charles
Wereko-Brobby headed up the Volta River Authority (he was
dismissed for poor performance). One of three PNC MPs, Moses
Baah, is the Deputy Health Minister, and three independent
MPs also hold Deputy Ministerial positions. They serve in
the NPP government in return for their (or their colleagues)
votes in Parliament. Particularly early on, when the NPP had
only 100 votes in the 200-member Parliament, every extra vote
counted -- still true today with the NPP MP count at 103.
But the NPP also keeps the small parties off balance with
this pick and choose strategy; co-opted small party MPs vote
the NPP party line, while their party officers fume, and
attempt critiques of the ruling party.

Who Gets the Chop
--------------

8. (SBU) The CPP, the namesake descendent of first president
Kwame Nkrumah's old pan-Africanist party, and the PNC, rooted
in the northern half of Ghana, will likely survive any
Electoral Commission hecatomb. Having actually managed to
elect someone to Parliament, and with more-or-less
respectable district office counts (CPP, 46; PNC, 39) they
should make the cut. The rest, the GCPP, NRP, GCPP, DPP,
UGM, and GDRP, are at clear risk of de-registration, with
near-zero district office counts, at best sporadic efforts to
hold required yearly congresses, little obvious support among
Ghanaians, and little chance of electing anyone to office.

Comment
--------------

9. (C) Ghana has essentially a two-party system: the
business-oriented NPP of President John Kufuor, and former
president Jerry Rawlings' semi-populist NDC. Nkrumaist
leftists and nativist non-entities play on the margins of
this two-party political scene. However circumspect the EC
proves to be in wielding its constitutional authority,
several of the smaller parties will not be missed if
de-registered. Others will continue to attract a loyal if
very modest following, and cut what deals they can with the
ruling party for office and influence. End comment.








Lanier