INTRAPARTY VIOLENCE: POTENTIAL THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE
By Rev. Msgr. Dr. Stephen Ntim
The increasing waves of leadership wrangling and court suits within political parties have reached a point that is simply unacceptable. These can pose potential threat to democratic principles. To state that political parties are critical in contemporary democracy would be an understatement.
This is especially so in our political history when we went through political meandering in the early 1970s and the 80s with needless military interventions and dictatorships. The democratic renaissance of the 1990s with the re-birth of political parties has contributed enormously to Parliamentary Democracy.
Political parties in Ghana continue to be the key to our democratic governance since they offer the electorate choices in the electoral process as well as providing some cohesion to the legislature.
This notwithstanding, political parties in the country grappling with internal conflicts and cohesion, can precipitate general public dissatisfaction and the earlier party reform initiatives are taken, the better to avoid stagnation and to regain legitimacy.
What is going on internally in the biggest opposition party is unfortunate, to say the least. Years back, the ruling incumbent party also had similar challenges. Whether it is NPP or NDC, excessive internal wrangling need not be taken for granted especially when it persists for so long.
Political parties’ ability to offer the much needed alternative choices as well as cohesion for the legislature in any democratic governance is contingent to a large extent on their internal organizational efficiency.
Fragility
African political parties compared with the majority of western parties are by nature highly fractious and fragile. Our political parties in Africa, probably with the exception of Somalia, are highly skewed along ethnic, regional, religious or clan cleavages.
Besides, as a society, Africa generally lacks socially entrenched and institutionalized political, social and above all governance structures for political competition to be channeled. Elsewhere, internal political competition and wrangling could be contained within established structures and tradition.
For example, the Netherlands initially had rifts encompassing Calvinists, Socialists, Catholics, western entrepreneurs, southern small farmers etc. into the body politics and internal political parties, but by and large, they remained relatively stable and managed the political competition.
Our African political competition whether interparty or intraparty seems to follow these pre-existing fault lines of ethnic cleavages which in turn appear to determine the structure of our political parties. By and large, our political parties in Africa in the considered opinion of this Writer do not seem to be linked organically to any socially organized group (because African society is not socially stratified as such).
In this respect, African political parties resort to mobilizing people along mediocre issues (which should not be issues at all in the first place) that are ready to hand such as ethnicity, tribal affiliations, – without regard for the long-term consequences.
Antecedents
All these historical antecedents to our partisan political system make our parties, whether inter-party or intra-party, become highly porous, notwithstanding all the good things coded into party constitutions. In short, tribal conflicts, prejudices and stereotyping within and among party members could spill over into both inter-party and intra-party organizations.
So, political parties instead of providing the needed stability internally can potentially fuel explosive social forces, especially when some party elites play on these social cleavages to gain power and consolidate their power.
Political parties then seem to have an inherent propensity towards oligarchy - and this is where the danger is. The two leading political parties - NPP and NDC in the opinion of this Writer, notwithstanding their respective weaknesses, still hold the key to Ghana’s democratic governance.
Even though this Writer still believes in the resilience of our two leading political parties to resolve internal squabbles and leadership wrangling, nevertheless, we need not overstretch the elasticity to breaking point. The recent happenings in the NPP are getting too extreme to the point where lives are being lost and they all carry some tag of criminality.
After all, what is politics all about, if not about respecting life, human dignity and maintaining law and order? Passion for democratic governance is meaningless, if any political party sacrifices the Rule of Law on the altar of internal wrangling and struggle for power.
The increasing waves of leadership wrangling and court suits within political parties have reached a point that is simply unacceptable. These can pose potential threat to democratic principles. To state that political parties are critical in contemporary democracy would be an understatement.
This is especially so in our political history when we went through political meandering in the early 1970s and the 80s with needless military interventions and dictatorships. The democratic renaissance of the 1990s with the re-birth of political parties has contributed enormously to Parliamentary Democracy.
Political parties in Ghana continue to be the key to our democratic governance since they offer the electorate choices in the electoral process as well as providing some cohesion to the legislature.
This notwithstanding, political parties in the country grappling with internal conflicts and cohesion, can precipitate general public dissatisfaction and the earlier party reform initiatives are taken, the better to avoid stagnation and to regain legitimacy.
What is going on internally in the biggest opposition party is unfortunate, to say the least. Years back, the ruling incumbent party also had similar challenges. Whether it is NPP or NDC, excessive internal wrangling need not be taken for granted especially when it persists for so long.
Political parties’ ability to offer the much needed alternative choices as well as cohesion for the legislature in any democratic governance is contingent to a large extent on their internal organizational efficiency.
Fragility
African political parties compared with the majority of western parties are by nature highly fractious and fragile. Our political parties in Africa, probably with the exception of Somalia, are highly skewed along ethnic, regional, religious or clan cleavages.
Besides, as a society, Africa generally lacks socially entrenched and institutionalized political, social and above all governance structures for political competition to be channeled. Elsewhere, internal political competition and wrangling could be contained within established structures and tradition.
For example, the Netherlands initially had rifts encompassing Calvinists, Socialists, Catholics, western entrepreneurs, southern small farmers etc. into the body politics and internal political parties, but by and large, they remained relatively stable and managed the political competition.
Our African political competition whether interparty or intraparty seems to follow these pre-existing fault lines of ethnic cleavages which in turn appear to determine the structure of our political parties. By and large, our political parties in Africa in the considered opinion of this Writer do not seem to be linked organically to any socially organized group (because African society is not socially stratified as such).
In this respect, African political parties resort to mobilizing people along mediocre issues (which should not be issues at all in the first place) that are ready to hand such as ethnicity, tribal affiliations, – without regard for the long-term consequences.
Antecedents
All these historical antecedents to our partisan political system make our parties, whether inter-party or intra-party, become highly porous, notwithstanding all the good things coded into party constitutions. In short, tribal conflicts, prejudices and stereotyping within and among party members could spill over into both inter-party and intra-party organizations.
So, political parties instead of providing the needed stability internally can potentially fuel explosive social forces, especially when some party elites play on these social cleavages to gain power and consolidate their power.
Political parties then seem to have an inherent propensity towards oligarchy - and this is where the danger is. The two leading political parties - NPP and NDC in the opinion of this Writer, notwithstanding their respective weaknesses, still hold the key to Ghana’s democratic governance.
Even though this Writer still believes in the resilience of our two leading political parties to resolve internal squabbles and leadership wrangling, nevertheless, we need not overstretch the elasticity to breaking point. The recent happenings in the NPP are getting too extreme to the point where lives are being lost and they all carry some tag of criminality.
After all, what is politics all about, if not about respecting life, human dignity and maintaining law and order? Passion for democratic governance is meaningless, if any political party sacrifices the Rule of Law on the altar of internal wrangling and struggle for power.