During their term, they sidelined and emasculated all centres of dissent in the country. They rendered all critical voices redundant.
Should the NDC now embark on large-scale power consolidation by pruning the public sector and the “commanding heights” of the economy to support their own patronage networks, they will be riding on highways paved by the NPP and they will encounter very few obstacles and roadblocks ahead. Roadblocks were systematically removed by the NPP.
I have been lucky to see five presidents in the 4th Republic. By far the least interested in non-partisan opinion and civil society views was the one about to leave office in 3 days. The same strength of will that many thought would be deployed to reform governance in Ghana simply became the most strident tone-deafness Ghana has ever seen.
In this quest, he was enabled not by family and friends as some say. That is a comfortable LIE. This President was supported to the hilt by mid-level activists and the middle-class bulwark of the NPP. Everything he sought to do, they found a ready basis for it. They had zero alternative views on anything. Any attempt to pin the blame on some small cabal would be disingenuous post-hoc rationalisation.
The removal of institutional checks on power by the outgoing President was thus undertaken with the full support of the NPP elite. The culture of “let them say, they will grow tired” and “we will do what we like” became part and parcel of the logic of power in the NPP across its elite support base. It was seen as a key to longevity. It is not something any “mafia” imposed from anywhere. The need to dominate the NDC blinded the entire elite structure of the party. No one wanted to rock the boat.
As we now know, sometimes, a group can be too clever by half.
The system they constructed to entrench themselves in power and sustain access to the feeding trough has now become a diabolic gift to their opponents.
I hope that some true and deep soul-searching happens in the NPP about the dangers of the culture that was allowed to fester.
So far, the party’s search for a remedy to their recent electoral loss has been marked by inward-looking ideas.
There is the usual talk about unfair sharing of the booty of power, unresponsiveness of “appointees”, rigged internal primaries for selecting candidates, and the usual dross.
Every attempt is being made to dump the burden on a few senior executives and political functionaries at the top. There has been zero discussion about the quality of policy debate within the party or how the pact with the millions of non-NPP people who vote in Ghanaian elections can be renewed.
No one is asking how come no group within the NPP elite and middle-class opposed e-levy, the cathedral, Kelni GVG, excessive partisan appointments to sensitive institutions, SML etc. How come? In a group with thousands of highly educated and intelligent individuals?
Even today, I bet you that if discussions about such policies come up, middle-class and elite NPP people will find arguments to justify them. See how they are reacting to a scheme to spend roughly $300 million on so-called e-immigration stuff that has no resonance with economic development in a country under IMF strictures that is struggling to pay its national debts.
Yet, cumulatively, these are the same policies that built up to the DDEP, the fiscal crisis, and the cost of living catastrophe still with us.
I don’t see any serious effort within the NPP to discuss how the party’s social structure failed so thoroughly to the point where the government had zero internal opposition when pushing such bad policies.
By condoning an environment in which a government can ramrod any bad policy, the NPP has laid the groundwork for the incoming government to embark on some serious attacks on public institutions in the name of establishing balance with rather limited resistance.
If the incoming government takes any cue from the NPP, I fear that it too will succeed in railroading any vengeful policies through. They will gut the patronage infrastructure set up by the NPP across all areas of national life, with sad collateral effects on our institutions.
Whilst “permanent opposition” activists would do their/our best to rein in any excessive use of power under any government in Ghana, they/we would be doing so with their/our hands tied behind their/our backs.
Tied with ropes woven by the outgoing NPP government and its high-handed President.
By Bright Simons
