Democracy or Good Governance?

From the book yet to be published on “Reflections on Nkrumah.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

November 30, 2023

 One Avijit Biswas in an essay summed up good governance as referring to “mobilizing the people of a country in the best direction possible. It requires the unity of people in society and motivates them to attain political objectivity. In other words, it ensures proper utilization of all the resources of the state for its citizens which ensures sustainable development.”

The above comes close to my understanding of “good governance,” even better than what was stated by the Ministers of the Council of Europe in 2008.

Going by Avijit Biswas’ definition, Ghana under Nkrumah had “good governance.”  Unfortunately, colonialism would never concede superiority to any state that sought self-governance after its paternalistic rule.  

Former President of Bolivia, Evo Morales  Ayma knew the experience.  He said in 2020 that “Colonialism has always used the idea of progress by its parameters and its reality…” 

The nature of colonialism was to state emphatically it was all-knowing.  Once a leader of a former colonial country like Nkrumah strayed from the colonial format, that leader would be charged with lacking the practice of  “democracy.”  The charge’s validity would be based on only what the West said it meant. 

In 2023, the “democracy” envisaged by Ghana has not worked.  The ruling NPP which forebears were the opposition under Nkrumah is finding it very difficult to follow the same “democratic” rule it demanded under the latter. 

Nana Ohene Ntow, a former NPP General Secretary, in radio conversation in November 2023 opined that the circumstances of Ghana’s economy demanded a new look for leadership.  He was going to support Alan Kyerematen in 2024, a founding member of the NPP who is now running as independent candidate under the new banner “Movement for Change.´ 

Alan’s motive is that the country does not need political parties to bring change.  It needs dynamic leadership as has happened in other countries, including our own.  He cites George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Lee Kwan Yew and Ghana’s own Nkrumah.  For announcing his support for Alan Kyerematen, Ntow has been expelled from the NPP party, therewith this party declared a narrow and not a national interest as Kyerematen and Ntow are now espousing. 

What both Kyerematen and Ntow are hinting at but would not say so loudly is that Nkrumah was right.  It is time to realize as Nkrumah did that Colonialism worked on two levels. Whereas during pre-independence times it was direct.  After independence it grew more abstract and complex. There must be a new way to fight off the restrictions that colonialism placed on Ghana.

There is a need to look at this “democracy’ again.  Is it to do so in the interest of a national “good governance” or to go along with the whims of the “democracy” espoused by the West?

 More risible would be the assumption that the West has always claimed.  That it was doing for Ghana a benevolent deed that Ghana could not do for itself while using a coup to undermine the true “democratic” process.  The law of non-contradiction must point out the hypocrisy entailed in the act. 

This Movement for Change, as explained by Alan Kyerematen and Ntow, must be allowed as part of the experiment in the strive for “good governance,” and therefore the restoration of real “democracy.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Washington, DC, November 30, 2023

E. Ablorh-Odjidja,Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Ghana, November 30, 2023

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