US embassy cable - 04ACCRA256

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ACCRA 000256 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/09/2014 
TAGS: PGOV, PHUM, GH 
SUBJECT: ELECTIONS V: TO BE OR NOT TO BE - SMALL PARTIES 
AND THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION 
 
 
Classified By: Polchief Richard Kaminski, reason 1.5 (B/D). 
 
Summary 
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1.  (SBU)  Ghana has two large political parties, two small 
parties, and 6 tiny mom-and-pop operations that exist mainly 
on paper.  Ghana's Electoral Commission (EC) hopes to cull 
moribund also-rans from the ranks of registered parties for 
the December national elections.   Some of these parties do 
play a role, however reduced, in Ghana's political landscape. 
 Meanwhile, the ruling party will continue to co-opt small 
party luminaries to advance its own interests. End Summary. 
 
National Character Required 
--------------------------- 
2.  (U)  Every political party in Ghana is required by the 
1992 constitution to demonstrate "national character." Each 
must have branches in all 10 regions (and two-thirds of each 
region's districts).  National officers must be drawn from 
every region.  Membership or symbols based on "ethnic, 
regional, religious or other sectional connotation" are 
forbidden.  Parties must "satisfy" the EC that they meet 
these requirements. 
 
Some Found Wanting 
------------------ 
3.  (SBU) After carefully warning political parties for 
months on end, at regular sessions of the EC's Inter-Party 
Advisory Committee (IPAC), that it intended to verify names, 
addresses and physical locations of offices, the EC in 
December scoured the countryside hunting up national, 
regional and district offices and officers.  Sometimes led by 
local party officers, sometimes alone, officials poked into 
dozens of dusty towns and villages in the middle of harmattan 
season.  Fresh paint and party symbols often adorned 
structures dedicated to petty commerce: tinroof storefronts, 
small bakeries, seamstresses' streetside counters.  Anything 
that could remotely be called an office was claimed to be so, 
with EC officials sometimes standing in cobweb-strewn, 
broken-roofed shacks while party officers baldly proclaimed 
continual use by streams of party faithful. 
 
4.  (SBU)  In January, the EC presented its findings to the 
IPAC.  To the satisfaction of the two major parties, 
President Kufuor's NPP and former President Rawlings' NDC, 
both easily met the requirements.  Two small parties, the CPP 
and PNC, with one and three seats in the 200-member 
Parliament, respectively, and debatable claims to national 
reach, missed the targets but came fairly close.  Other small 
party officials sat in glum silence as the EC spelled out 
with great care, using color-coded charts and graphs, just 
how far they fell from the required constitutional standards 
of "national character."   District office totals ranged from 
zero to seven (out of 110); five of the six other parties had 
no national office.  At the conclusion of the EC's 
presentation, several of the six parties, feeling at risk, 
tried to dispute the findings, but their efforts were 
half-hearted and unconvincing. 
 
Solution: De-register? 
---------------------- 
5. (C)  By implication, the EC's constitutional authority to 
register parties also encompasses the power to de-register 
parties who fail the "national character" test.  EC officials 
privately express their wish to clean the electoral slate of 
these nearly non-functioning parties.  Ballots (which usually 
include party symbols and candidate photographs) would be 
simplified, and the EC would spare itself the trouble of 
attempting to communicate with organizations that have barely 
a stamp and envelope to rub together.   However, in public, 
they aver that no binding decisions have yet been reached, 
and "deliberations" continue on their findings and 
conclusions.  Several small party officials have told us that 
they will simply re-register, under new names, if the EC 
de-registers them.  "And what will the EC do?" said one. 
"Re-verify party offices?  They don't have the time for 
that."  Whether the EC would allow this is an open question. 
 
Marginal Voices Cherished? 
-------------------------- 
6.  (SBU) Despite their small-to-infinitismal size, the 
also-rans do figure in Ghanaian politics.  Local media grant 
extensive coverage to their Lilliputian doings.  Four of the 
small parties have tried for some time, unsuccessfully, to 
merge and form a unified "Nkrumaist" alternative on the left 
of the political spectrum (all told, these parties polled 6% 
of the vote in the 2000 presidential election).  Petty 
egotism, each party holding fiercely to its own name and 
leaders, proved the merger's undoing -- with the convoluted 
ups and downs dutifully documented in print and on the 
airwaves.  Any political event of any consequence, the yearly 
opening of Parliament, ministerial press briefings, lecture 
series by one of Accra's prominent NGOs or think-tanks, 
generally includes a sprinkling of small party leaders, who 
bask in the limelight and repeat their standard stump 
speeches, to the attentive if sometimes amused concern of the 
press and hosts. 
 
7. (C) As the small parties squabble amongst themselves, and 
make theatrically unbelievable pronouncements on their 
impeding victory next December, the ruling NPP divides and 
rules, offering senior positions to the most promising and 
talented small party leaders.  The CPP's sole MP, Freddie 
Blay, is the First Deputy Speaker in Parliament. Kwesi Ndoum, 
hailing like Blay from the modernist wing of the CPP, has 
held several senior ministerial positions, and is now 
Minister of Energy.  UGM presidential candidate Charles 
Wereko-Brobby headed up the Volta River Authority (he was 
dismissed for poor performance).  One of three PNC MPs, Moses 
Baah, is the Deputy Health Minister, and three independent 
MPs also hold Deputy Ministerial positions.  They serve in 
the NPP government in return for their (or their colleagues) 
votes in Parliament.  Particularly early on, when the NPP had 
only 100 votes in the 200-member Parliament, every extra vote 
counted  -- still true today with the NPP MP count at 103. 
But the NPP also keeps the small parties off balance with 
this pick and choose strategy;  co-opted small party MPs vote 
the NPP party line, while their party officers fume, and 
attempt critiques of the ruling party. 
 
Who Gets the Chop 
----------------- 
8.  (SBU) The CPP, the namesake descendent of first president 
Kwame Nkrumah's old pan-Africanist party, and the PNC, rooted 
in the northern half of Ghana, will likely survive any 
Electoral Commission hecatomb.  Having actually managed to 
elect someone to Parliament, and with more-or-less 
respectable district office counts (CPP, 46; PNC, 39) they 
should make the cut.  The rest, the GCPP, NRP, GCPP, DPP, 
UGM, and GDRP, are at clear risk of de-registration, with 
near-zero district office counts, at best sporadic efforts to 
hold required yearly congresses, little obvious support among 
Ghanaians, and little chance of electing anyone to office. 
 
Comment 
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9.  (C) Ghana has essentially a two-party system: the 
business-oriented NPP of President John Kufuor, and former 
president Jerry Rawlings' semi-populist NDC.  Nkrumaist 
leftists and nativist non-entities play on the margins of 
this two-party political scene.  However circumspect the EC 
proves to be in wielding its constitutional authority, 
several of the smaller parties will not be missed if 
de-registered. Others will continue to attract a loyal if 
very modest following, and cut what deals they can with the 
ruling party for office and influence.  End comment. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Lanier