Are Danquah-Busiasts Really Elitist?

Even though, Dr Danquah’s programme, which was adopted by the Watson Commission in 1948, outlined a process which envisaged Ghana achieving full independence “within 10 years”, his rational approach was perceived to mean that he was a gradualist, as compared to Nkrumah’s perceived radical approach.
Here in Accra in 2007, I witnessed the Grand Debate on African unity and how Muammar al-Ghaddaffi lambasted gradualists, such as Thabo Mbeki. The Libyan leader is now AU Chairman, we are yet to see any graduation from gradualism to acceleration on the integration front.

Ghana’s former President John Agyekum Kufuor was quoted in an interview recently saying that voter choice may not always be rational because the New Patriotic Party (the party of the Danquah-Dombo-Busiasts) did “much more” for the majority of Ghanaians than the National Democratic Congress, who have styled themselves as ‘social democrats’ managed to do in 19 years.

The political opponents of the Danquah-Dombo-Busiasts have always been better at saying, “Ghanaians don’t need a president who is arrogant and looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them. One who feels their pain.” These words were successfully used against a man who for more than 30 years (more than any of his rivals in the 2008 contest) dedicated his time, money, energy and intellect to fighting for the cause of the masses – Nana Akufo-Addo, an Akyem aristocrat.

Yet, the statistics clearly show that, since the end of the First republic, no government can boast of implementing the kind of social interventions that the ‘elitist’ big-man friendly NPP did in 8 years under President Kufuor, an Oxford-trained Ashanti aristocrat.

According to the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies between the government of Ghana and the International Monetary Fund for 2009-2012, signed in August 2009,  under the NPP Ghana saw “a decline in the poverty rate from 39 percent (1998–99) to 28 percent (2005–06); other social welfare indicators also improved.”  The IMF admits, “At this rate, Ghana is poised to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving extreme poverty ahead of 2015.” But will we by this turn of events?

The World Bank estimates that half a million more Ghanaians will fall below the poverty line (at US$1.25 a day) between 2009 and 2010, this should add an estimated 2 percentage points to the poverty rate, reversing the trend of progress over the previous decade. This is because the tight fiscal programme that the IMF and World Bank have persuaded Mills/Mahama government to adopt, the planned macroeconomic adjustment is bringing about increased cost recovery in the energy sector and increased taxation, with a squeeze on investment spending, wages and public sector employment, this will lead private consumption growth to fall, which will result in income poverty rising.

Even though, government has revised its end-of-year inflation target by two percentage points to 14.5%. *The Danquah Institute analysis estimates as higher a rate as 17.8% at the end of 2009. Ghanaians should expect yearly average rate of inflation not less than 19%.

With public sector wages not going up by more than 17% in nominal terms, this can translate into the average Ghanaian getting poorer.  
At over 11% of GDP, Ghana’s public sector payroll is more than twice in percentages wise what it used to be in 2000. It is one of the largest ratios in Africa, where the average is at about 6%. But, for the next three years we risk falling back into the situation under structural adjustment programme where real wages habitually lost its value on an annual basis.

Though some analysis of the 2008 election results suggest that public sector workers such as teachers voted in their numbers against the NPP, the last five years of the NPP witnessed unprecedented substantial wage increases in the public sector. In 2008, the wage bill increased by 38 percent reflecting a 20 percent overall wage increase (against an inflation rate of 15 percent), an 8 percent increase in staff, and a 6 percent grade inflation. This came on the heels of increases on 36 and 27 percent in the payroll in 2006 and 2007. Increases in average wages added up to about 40% in real terms since 2006. In the education sector, for example, wages went up by 10% each year in real terms over the 2003-2008 period. Wages increased even faster in the health sector over the same period. Controlling for individual characteristics (education, experience, etc.), unionised public wages by 2008 were at least 25% higher than in the non-unionised private sector.

The elitist NPP sought to cushion the effects of rising food and crude oil prices last year by partly protecting the purchasing power of the poor through tax exemptions on fuel and food instituted in 2008 and by a scaling up of safety nets (including additional health and educational benefits, a new program of direct transfers to the ultra-poor, and subsidies for fertilizers in food insecure regions).

In the education sector, gross enrolment ratios have increased. A major initiative for improved enrolment ratios was the abolition of mandatory school fees for basic education and the introduction of capitation grants in the 2005–06 academic year. In the health sector, there have been progressive improvements in the delivery of a number of important outputs. Most notable are: increase in life expectancy from 55 years in 2003 to 57.9 in 2006; the introduction of a pre-paid National Health Insurance Scheme in 2004; and the introduction of free maternal care for expectant mothers. These, together, have put healthcare within the reach of the poor and vulnerable groups.

Again, investment in rural water facilities rose since 2002, and as a result access to safe water went up from 45% of the rural population in 2002 to 57% in 2008.
For the next two years, the fiscal restraints will be deeply felt by Ghanaians. The government has committed itself to a review this year aimed at reducing the number of zero-rated VAT items and convert domestic zero-rating to standard rate taxation. Electricity bills are also on the way up.  The list goes on and on…

Elitism is defined as the belief or attitude that those individuals who are considered members of the elite - a select group of people with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, wealth, rich background, specialised training or experience, or other distinctive attributes—are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight or those who view their own views as so; whose views and/or actions are most likely to be constructive to society as a whole; or whose extraordinary skills, abilities or wisdom render them especially fit to govern.

Recently, the NPP amended its constitution to allow over 115,000 of its members, mostly at the grassroots, to take part in electing the party’s presidential candidate. The other ‘leftist’, populist parties use not more than 2,000 delegates to choose their leaders.

Whether by circumstances or by virtue of the NDC’s lack of strong sincere attachment to any ideology, the NDC are once again in office signalling left and turning right. But will the NPP that drove high speed on the left side of the ideological divide while in office still allow itself to be branded as elitist and not for the masses?

*Since this article was first published in the DI Quarterly in October, the Danquah Institute has further projected with greater certainty end-of-year inflation rate at 17.6% and annual average inflation rate at 19.47%.

The author is the Executive Director of the Danquah Institute. Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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