Seventy-three per cent of Ghanaians now prefer elections to any other methods of selecting their leaders, surveys from the Afro Barometer have indicated. Although the study indicated that the two leading political parties in Ghana - the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) - enjoyed a specific social support base, that had not led to competing economic policies for the people. The Head of the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana, Legon, Dr Kwesi Jonah, disclosed this at a public forum organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, with support from Frederick Ebert Stiftung in Accra. The three-day event is on the theme: “Elections and the Democratic Challenges in Africa”. Dr. Jonah, who spoke on: “Elections and Democracy: A Critical Review”, said more Ghanaian voters have expressed confidence in the Electoral Commission’s (EC’s) management of elections, a development which was essential for the transition and consolidation of democracy in Ghana. He said through the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC), election disputes in Ghana were able to secure elite accommodation and consensus for the consolidation of democracy. Dr Jonah explained that since November 1992, Ghana had conducted regular elections without any disruptions and the process had steadily evolved to become the only legitimate means of transferring power or renewing the mandate of incumbents. He said elections had generated institutional changes, becoming invaluable to the process of consolidating liberal democracy in Ghana. He emphasised that democratic elections had, over the years, made governments more responsive to the need of the people, as they competed to bring more social development such as schools, hospitals, portable water and electricity to majority of the people. He said every election has constituted an improvement over the preceding one because of the creation of an election consensus institution in the form of IPAC. Dr. Jonah said elections in Ghana had, since 1992, generated the interest of a large body of international and domestic observers. “In every election year, not less than one dozen international observer groups fly into the country to contribute to Ghana’s democracy building effort, in particular; the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, the European Union Observer Mission, the Cater Centre, USAID and the British High Commission,” he said. Professor Raymond N. Osei, a lecturer at the Department of Classics and Philosophy of the University of Ghana, who spoke on: “Political Education of the Electorate: Current Challenges,” called for political education of the electorates as a desirable prelude to Election 2012. He asked the EC, the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to educate people on their rights and responsibilities as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution. Prof. Osei noted that Ghana’s electoral process was not all that complicated, adding that even illiterate members of the society were generally able to easily exercise their franchise. “What one cannot guarantee, however, is whether the general public is sufficiently educated to be able to make informed choices regarding the programmes that the political parties advertise in their manifestos and public debates,” he said. He said to improve upon governance and public accountability, the parties should be made to cast their programmes in unambiguous language and be given wide publicity, especially in the print media, in order to reduce the temptation of denials. He charged the parties competing for political power to communicate to the electorate what separated them from other parties. Prof. Osei said in the absence of clear differences in programmes, the electorate was left with no option but to make choices on the basis of emotions, which was not healthy for good governance. He appealed to civil society groups and human rights organisations to intervene in the public spaces to help call the political parties to order and also expose miscreants who went contrary to the rules of the games. Source: GNA /Ghana