Business executive and former Unilever Executive Vice President Yaw Nsarkoh has described Ghana’s two main political parties as “the party of the elites.”

He argues that democracy has drifted away from improving the well-being of ordinary citizens.

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on Tuesday, he said the country’s politics has become consumed by elite competition and early electioneering, rather than development.

“What is supposed to be the political alternative, the opposition [NPP] also immediately went into who is going to be their candidate,” he said.

“And from then on, it’s a game of everybody looking for how they can trip the other.”

He expressed concern about how quickly political actors have shifted their focus to the next general election.

“So that is in 2028, we are sitting in 2026, and the number of times that you hear the conversation about 2028, you do worry.”

According to him, this preoccupation with succession battles has weakened democracy's developmental purpose.

“So what has happened is that development did not come to be the real partner, accompanying partner of democracy, where the purpose of the democracy was actually to improve the well-being of people, to bring real development.”

Instead, he argued, national attention has been diverted to internal party struggles.

“We’re spending all our time on the factional infighting among what I call the political elites.”

Nsarkoh did not limit his criticism to one side of the political divide. He insisted that both major parties are part of the same establishment.

“The party of the elites is in power, and it has two segments, the NPP and the NDC.”

“They’re all the party of the elites.”

His remarks add to the growing public debate over whether Ghana’s democratic practices are delivering tangible improvements in living standards.

By framing the New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress as different wings of the same elite structure, Nsarkoh challenged the notion of a meaningful political alternative.

He suggested that the fixation on internal jockeying for power, years ahead of the next polls, reflects a system more concerned with control than transformation.

For him, the deeper worry is that democracy has not been anchored to development as intended.