Akua Bonsu

By the time the year 2012 rolls around, Ghanaians would be at a crossroads faced with a similar decision that Americans faced back in 2004. The parallel is striking. But to fully understand it, a visit back in time to the beginning of the 1980s is necessary. Ghanaians and Americans have made some electoral decisions that, while interesting to say the least, call into question whether we do not think alike sometimes.

For the purpose of this contrast, let us shelf the so-called political alignment between the NPP and the Republicans and that between the NDC and the Democrats. These alliances exhibit, in many ways, the concept of Odd Couples. All you have to do is pair up the following presidents: Kufuor with Bush, and Rawlings with Clinton. A more apt pairing would be Kufuor with Clinton and Rawlings with Bush. One pair, the latter, is characterized by sparse or questionable education level, erratic behavior, dictatorial tendencies, and near crass behavior. The other pair is obviously highly educated, judicious in their methods, democratic in their deliberations, and classy in their behavior. Unfortunately, the good guys would adversely impact the chances of their successors at the party level based upon perceptions and occurrences directly unrelated to governance. Kufuor may have dashed Akufo-Addo’s chances at the polls based upon perceptions of arrogant behavior by government officials in his administration while Clinton may have dashed Gore’s chances based upon immorality a la Monica Lewinsky.

Never mind that prior to these two men’s respective terms, their countries had been run down by the previous administrations. Reagan came in promising tax cuts and heavy defense spending – a dangerous combination that led to record deficits, increased regressive taxes, and high unemployment. George Herbert Walker Bush would literally extend Reagan’s term by another four years during which Wall Street meltdown and economic downturn forced Americans to search for a savior from unlikely sources. Clinton, a young governor from a small state of Arkansas consequently won an unlikely victory over incumbent G H W Bush whose popularity index was as high as 90% going into the election.

At the same time in Ghana, Rawlings and his PNDC and later NDC had done a fine job of running Ghana right down the drain. Inflation, Interest Rates, and Unemployment were all at unheard-of levels. Furthermore, personal freedoms had been curbed in Ghana such that citizens expressing opposing opinions to those of the government’s had to look over their shoulders for fear of being apprehended. People were actually killed for speaking their minds. So autocratic had the NDC government become that many viewed the 2000 election as a sham, and that Vice President Atta Mills’ election was a forgone conclusion. Notwithstanding the setup, Kufuor won over a virtual incumbent.

And so it came to pass that in the 1990s, the Clinton administration managed to turn around an American economy that was stuck in a recession. Unemployment dropped from 8.2% in February of 1992 to 4.7% in January of 2001. Inflation Rate dropped from 3.01% in 1992 to 2.85% in 2001 even though MEDIAN Household income grew from $96,426 to $109,297 during the same period. Finally, Clinton met an annual deficit of $290.4 billion in 1992, but left on an annual surplus of $236.4 billion. After righting the ship, Clinton’s party was booted out of office on a triviality such as immorality.

And so it came to pass that in the 2000s, the Kufuor administration, after inheriting a Ghana in search of direction on all fronts, turned our nation into a global darling. Unemployment dropped from roughly 39% to 19%. Interest Rate dropped from 49% to 22%. Ghana’s Per Capita Gross Domestic product grew from a paltry $350 in 2000 to $1,500 in 2008. Finally, not only was national debt reduced from $5.8 billion to $2.8 during Kufuor’s eight-year tenure, personal freedoms of Ghanaians enjoyed their highest levels in the nation’s history just as investor confidence skyrocketed.. As a “Thank You,” Ghanaians voted the NPP out because they had become “arrogant,” another triviality having nothing to do with governance.

Hopefully Ghanaians would learn from what happened to the United States after Clinton and the Democrats were voted out of office. Presented with Intelligence that Osama Bin laden was planning a terrorist attack on US soil in August of 2001, Bush did not even read the report. But when 911 occurred, he blamed it on Clinton and the Democrats – sound familiar? Faced with a global economic crisis when every country is putting corrective measures in place, the do-nothing Mills sings only one song – “it’s the NPP’s fault.”

Bush promised morality in the White House only to preside over blackmail, deception that led to the Iraq war, and a host of other not-too-moral White House practices – sound familiar? Mills campaigned on needlessly high petrol prices only to raise the price of petrol three times already in less than a year. Just as everything Clinton did in eight years was undone by Bush in another eight years, Mill appears poised to undo everything Kufuor did in his eight years if the first year is any barometer.

The good news is that Ghanaians have the opportunity to do what Americans failed to do in 2004. At current rate, the otherwise relatively stable cedi under Kufuor will depreciate to the Rawlings era levels; the national debt will climb to $10 billion; the contraction in economic growth will translate into unemployment rate of nearly 50 – again as it was under Rawlings; interest rates will climb to the high 40%; and whatever hardship Ghanaians are currently enduring in the first year of Mills administration will more than quadruple if they do not muster the courage to vote out the NDC and return the NPP to manage the affairs of the nation as it successfully did from 2001 to the beginning of this year.