Every serious conversation about reforming Ghana’s democracy begins at the wrong place. We debate constitutional amendments, judicial independence, and parliamentary efficiency, yet consistently avoid the point at which democracy is first broken. The truth is simple and uncomfortable. Democratic institutions are only as credible as the political parties that produce their leaders. When internal party democracy is rotten, no constitution, however elegant, can save the system.

It is against this backdrop that the Constitutional Review Committee has submitted its recommendations to the President. Many of those proposals are necessary. However, they will inevitably underperform if they are not anchored in reforming the internal political machinery that produces Members of Parliament. Democracy does not fail first in Parliament. It fails long before that, inside party primaries.

For this reason, the National Democratic Congress, as the governing party, must begin reform from within. Anyone who has contested an NDC parliamentary primary knows what many beneficiaries of the system prefer not to say publicly. Internal elections are heavily monetised, tightly controlled, and structurally tilted in favour of incumbents. I state this not as conjecture, but from lived experience.

To understand the problem, one must follow the sequence of manipulation. It begins at the branch level. Constituency secretaries exercise near absolute control over membership registers. These registers can be quietly altered through selective additions, purges, or delayed updates, all under the cover of routine administration. Because the same officers also control party cards, political access itself becomes conditional. New members are sometimes registered without being given their cards, making them easy to monitor, pressure, and influence.

Consequently, branch executives are not merely elected. They are curated. Individuals perceived as insufficiently loyal to sitting Members of Parliament are replaced using manipulated registers or strategically recruited new members. Even after branch elections, party cards of elected executives are frequently confiscated under administrative pretexts, ensuring continued compliance. By the time parliamentary primaries are held, the delegate pool has already been engineered.

Predictably, the primaries themselves become openly transactional. Delegates view the process primarily as an economic opportunity. Many say this openly. They describe themselves as the kingmakers and refer to the primaries as their only cocoa season. Aspirants are pressured to meet personal and family financial demands, while policy ideas, development plans, and community projects are dismissed as irrelevant. Some delegates bluntly advise aspirants to abandon community interventions altogether and spend directly on them instead. This is not an anecdote. It is routine practice.

What makes this situation particularly troubling is that it is widely known. All Members of Parliament, past and present, and several Ministers of State produced by the current government understand exactly how this system operates. They have lived it, benefited from it, and in many cases perfected it. Yet few are willing to say it publicly. Silence has become a political strategy, not because the system works, but because it works for them.

Accordingly, the system survives because it rewards those who pass through it. Publicly, many lament the cost of politics. Privately, they rely on the system’s exclusionary nature to maintain power. Self-preservation, rather than reform, becomes the governing instinct.

At this stage, defenders of the status quo advance a familiar argument. They insist that Parliament must be preserved for experienced hands, and that broadening internal elections would flood the House with newcomers incapable of functioning as lawmakers. This argument is an aberration. Experience is not preserved by gatekeeping. It is built through participation. Every effective legislator was once new.

In reality, this narrative reflects an octopus mentality. It is designed to protect a small coterie of career politicians who sponsor candidates, manipulate delegate systems, and circulate endlessly between Parliament, party leadership, and ministerial appointments. Reform threatens not institutional stability, but their control.

The real danger to lawmaking is therefore not new entrants. It is legislators whose primary qualification is their ability to survive a monetized internal party process. Such leaders arrive indebted, risk-averse, and beholden to factions. Procedural familiarity without independence is not experienced. It is institutional capture.

The contrast with functioning democracies makes this failure even clearer. In Massachusetts, where I have lived most of my adult life, candidates contest municipal offices with budgets far smaller than what is routinely spent in Ghanaian parliamentary primaries. That comparison alone exposes how distorted our internal political economy has become.

For that reason, the solution is neither radical nor complex. First, the electoral college must be broadened to allow every card-bearing party member to vote in parliamentary primaries. Second, constituency executives must be stripped of exclusive control over voter registers. Third, the confiscation or manipulation of party cards must attract strict sanctions. When thousands vote instead of a few hundred, bribery collapses under its own weight.

If the John Mahama government is serious about democratic renewal, reform must begin here. I therefore challenge the General Secretary of the NDC, Comrade Fiifi Fiavi Kwettey, and the Chairman General, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, both former Members of Parliament, to lead this change with courage and clarity.

Ghana’s democracy will not be rescued by constitutional clauses alone. It will endure only when political power itself is produced through fair, open, and accountable internal party democracy.