In the 2022 Afrobarometer survey, fifty-eight percent of respondents judged Ghanaian MPs as ineffective in passing laws or building consensus among political parties.

That’s unsurprising. On January 7, 2021, the 8th Parliament took off on a rancorous note with the election of a Speaker from the minority NDC.

The scenes in the House portrayed rash MPs entangled in bitter fights. They heaped curses and spewed venom on each other. The public’s jaw dropped, and Parliament’s reputation crashed.

MPs were expected to learn from the disgrace and restore their reputation. That didn’t happen. Attitudes towards subsequent legislations like the E-Levy and Anti-LGBTQ reflected a House sharply divided on party lines, lacking a firm interest in serving the public. Add that to Parliament’s feuds with the Executive and Judiciary, and Professor Gyimah-Boadi’s observation is inevitable: Ghana remains a highly flawed democracy.

The flaws can cause a democracy to die. In How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explain that democracies die not only through a coup d’état but also democratic erosion, meaning a gradual process of weakening democratic norms and values.

In this process, power-hungry political leaders manipulate democratic institutions to serve their narrow agendas. They assume a god complex, expecting people to bow to their whims and caprices. They firmly believe their ideas are superior to everyone’s and treat public office as a birthright. They ignore evidence-based policy advice and mindlessly pursue paths that clearly hurt the public good but serve their personal interests.

The posture of some MPs on Parliament’s current Appointment Committee fuels this flaw. The unsavory rhetoric and wanton destruction of public property are disdainful. Lawmakers couldn’t keep the law, and their behavior undermined basic democratic tenets.

A simple content analysis of the Committee’s proceedings shows that some MPs devoted more time to asking questions that have no bearing on the office for which the nominees were vetted.

Of course, party men and women will use all kinds of rhetorical strategies to defend the appropriateness of these questions. People, however, possess adequate sense to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant questions, and they can demonstrate that sense at the polls.

For the past twelve years, the behaviour of some political leaders in the Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary spurred democratic erosion.

The Executive pushed unpopular bills and delayed those of urgent national interest. The Legislature asserted itself in ways that choked the dividends of representation. The Judiciary hid behind legal tactics to delay adjudication on issues of pressing national importance. All these came at the ordinary Ghanaian’s expense.

Yet, without a democracy, political leaders will have no jurisdiction in which to pursue their interest. There’ll be no Parliament to ask irrelevant questions and destroy property.

There’ll be no Judiciary to preside over. And there’ll be no Executive authority to assert. If a mob could shake American democracy, a legacy of over three hundred years, ours isn’t immune.

As only a functioning democracy creates a stable space for political leaders to operate and assure our collective survival, we have a democracy if we can keep it.

The Author is Alex Osei-Kojo, an Assistant Public Policy Professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.