Ghana needs only two parties – Botchwey

For sometime to come, perhaps, the debate will focus on whether Ghana should have only two parties as practiced in other jurisdictions.

Ghana’s longest serving Finance Minister and a presidential candidate hopeful of the minority National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr. Kwesi Botchwey is advocating for the development of the necessary structures to ensure that the West African country has only two dominant political parties for future elections.

Dr. Botchwey, a prominent politician and academic is reported by the private-owned Daily Guide as saying that the stability of the country, greatly hinges on the formation of at least, two political parties who would be alternating in the business of state-craft as a way of removing or smothering the bickering, acrimony and pettiness that characterized the municipality of political parties with different and diametrically-opposed ideologies.

Dr. Botchwey an associate professor at the Columbia University in the United States of America who is now seeking the mandate of the Rawlings-founded NDC to become president of Ghana in 2004 said it is his conviction that the country would, one day, have only two dominant political parties. This is because if that system becomes a reality, it will blossom with teems of people who will over the years, acquire experience in the art of governance and thus avail the country of such potentials.

Although Dr. Botchwey, also a lawyer did not mention any particular parties, Ghana’s electoral results since 1992 when she returned to democracy under Jerry Rawlings show that only the National Democratic Congress and the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) have posted commendable electoral figures which show that they have a credible political base and ideology.

Already, some prominent Ghanaian journalists have dismissed the suggestions saying it has no basis and should not be given a serious consideration.

In the 1992 and ’96 presidential and parliamentary elections that the NDC won, it drew total national average votes of over 56.7% while the NPP, which beat the NDC to form the present government on January 7, 2001, also posted 57% after a second-round voting failed to produce a simple majority victory for the NPP’s John Agyekum Kufuor and Professor John Evans Atta Mills of the NDC.

In the first round votes, the NPP had 48.17% while the NDC secured about 45% votes.

The other political parties since the country’s three general elections in the Fourth Republic have been the People’s Heritage Party (PHP) led by General E.A. Erskine, the National Independence Party (NIP) led by businessman, Kwabena Darko, the People’s National Convention (PNC) led by Dr. Hilla Limman and Dr. Edward Mahama, the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP) led by Dan Lartey, the United Ghana Movement (UGM) led by now VRA boss, Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby (whose party is now on holiday), and newcomers, the National Reform Party (NRP), a splinter group of the NDC led by Augustus Goosie Tanoh.

All the votes they had in the last elections could not even total up to 10% neither could they garner 5% of the total valid votes cast, respectively from 1992 to the 2000 general elections.

Making a case for the emergence of the two dominant political parties in the country, therefore, the NDC presidential hopeful noted that in order to bring about the change, he would first of all pray the delegates to give him the mandate at the party’s upcoming congress, now shifted December 21 (instead of December 7), so as to go ahead to win the presidential contest in 2004, after which he would assemble other democratic forces for the building of two dominant political parties in the country.

According to DR. Botchwey, most of the people who have been urging him to participate in the NDC’s flagbearership race, have also asked him to help build the party by ensuring that the NDC is not only re-democratised, but re-positioned and given back to the members of the party.

To that end, Dr. Botchwey intimated that there is the need for the NDC to plan a re-assemblage of all democratic forces, including those who left the party to return to help in its rebuilding exercise so that “at least the country can have two main parties”.