A complex equation for Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia as he seeks to succeed President Akufo Addo .Photo courtesy
Based on political risk and political economics research at IMANI, current VP Mahamudu Bawumia would be denied a coronation, contrary to the interests of the party elites and gatekeepers since he has lost some of his luster among the grassroots. The preliminary primary results were in, there comes an updated impression of how the 2024 elections are likely to play out if nothing changes radically.
Except for 2000, which was a very exceptional election (the nation had never previously witnessed a transfer of power via the ballot box), no candidate in Ghanaian history has gone on to win the general elections if they received less than 85% of the vote in internal primaries.
If a candidate received less than 64% of the vote in the internal primary, they have never gone on to win the general elections. Compared to his 68% triumph in the Super-Delegate pre-primaries, the Veep's predicted 61.5% win in the primaries was less. This supports the hypothesis that he excites the elites more than the grassroots.
The Veep's outcomes come despite the withdrawal of one of his primary competitors. If this opponent had remained, there's a good chance that his vote total would have fallen into the low fifty. This is because the rival's supporters don't have a lot of crossover with the supporters of the MP and eccentric businessman who finished second in the most recent primary.
The primary runner-up hoping to sabotage Veep's campaign in the general elections in any manner is the largest danger for the ruling NPP to handle following the polls. The competitor who withdrew is preparing to run as an independent in 2024.
The opposition will automatically win if he receives just 2% of the vote. It's a high bar, though. In contrast, the runner-up, with his "Ross Perot" level of disruptive power, would easily win more than 10% of the national vote in the improbable event that he decides to run as an independent. To stop this, the governing party will move heaven and earth.
Even though the opposition party benefits greatly from the Veep's performance in the primaries and the government's decline in popularity as a result of the economic crisis, the ruling NPP still has a chance to win the presidency by a narrow margin (despite losing their slim parliamentary technical majority) if none of the scenarios in point 5 come to pass. This is because the Veep is injecting a "Northern" and "Muslim" dynamic to upset Ghana's electoral balance. The opposition faces a slim loss in the presidential polls if they do not respond with their own "Akan heartland" dynamic.
The Party officials, who have gone to great lengths to make the Vice President's elevation to the "flagbearer" post appear to have the support of Ghana's oldest political party on all fronts, are extremely distressed over his non-coronation. No presidential candidate since the restoration of democracy in 1992 has been victorious in the general elections without first winning their party's primary by a wide margin.
For example, six months ago, the opposition leader who served as both president and vice president won almost 99% of the vote in the NDC primary.
Following the same pattern, the current president received over 95% of the vote in the 2014 primaries, which paved the path for his election.
A presidential candidate's chances of winning the ensuing national elections have been practically nonexistent on the few occasions when they have won by less than 85% in their own party's primaries (the 2000 elections being a notable exception), such as in the NDC's 2002 and 2006 primaries or the NPP's 2007 and 2010 primaries. Based on the available data, it appears that leading a party to victory in the general elections in Ghana necessitates a candidate to organize a broad and unambiguous endorsement, akin to a coronation.
Former President John Mahama and current VP Bawumia at a pubic event. Both men will be front runners in the 2024 elections.Photo courtesy
THE MAGIC RISE
The life of the current Veep in politics has been idyllic. A few months before the 2008 general election, he was plucked from relative obscurity, much like other Veeps before him, from the technocratic halls of the Bank of Ghana to join the NPP presidential ticket. He had a lot to prove. Since then, the 60-year-old lawmaker has shown himself by being the most devoted supporter of the ruling NPP's distinctive, slogan-heavy public relations strategy.
In a party dominated by Southern, mostly Akan, Christians, his flawless academic record and Northern ethnic and Islamic religious roots gave his ascension a certain kind of exotic fairy-tale flourish. His rise to prominence inside the party was so fast that, at one point, major names lined up to support the story of his certain coronation. Subsequently, Ghana's economy started to decline, culminating in a disastrous situation that necessitated an immediate IMF rescue and the country's insolvency.
The Veep's economic qualifications, which helped him gain favor with the party's upper echelons during the party's opposition period and enabled him to effectively criticize the economic policies of the ruling administration, have now also proved to be his downfall. Suddenly, his lack of a solid foundation in the ruling party is a problem once more. His opponents are suddenly questioning the party's grassroots members if they understand the hype around his Oxford economics degree and the magnificent lectures that shaped his ascent. It appears that many people have suddenly lost faith in the big story explaining Veep's uniqueness.
A MAVERICK PARTY-POOPER
This is undoubtedly the reason that the most formidable opponent facing the Veep in the primaries is a seasoned MP from the ruling party and a maverick businessman who claims to employ 7,000 people, despite never having bothered to finish his bachelor's degree from a suburban New York institution.
Party bosses have been rattled by the rival's shoot-from-the-hip politics and eccentric style of criticizing the government's record despite this being an internal election. They have been careful to refute his accusations of their favoritism towards the Veep, but they still need to send out as strong a hint as possible that the Party will be accused of being biased towards the predominantly Akan Christian South if they fail to elect the first Muslim and Northerner as their presidential candidate.
THE PRIMACY OF IDENTITY POLITICS
The Veep is predicted to win the national polls with a sizable advantage, but far less than the amount that successful contenders have garnered in their primaries. How does this affect his prospects of winning the general election in 2024?
If the 2024 elections were to be contested mainly based on policy performance, the opposition NDC would have easily prevailed due to the partial mobilization of the ruling party's base, as evidenced by the candidate's predicted outcome in the primary. However, as is the case with elections worldwide, policy is rarely the only determining element, and identity politics is a significant concern.
The NPP's historical strength in the southern and middle-belt Akan areas means that should the Veep emerge victorious in the primaries as expected, he will have far more leeway in addressing identity-related issues than the opposition candidate, a Christian from the north, in the areas with a majority of Muslims and the geographical north. The NDC advises extreme caution in how they approach campaigning in the North and the Muslim-dominated "Zongos" for fear of upsetting the densely populated Akan areas. This is because the party has a somewhat tense relationship with supporters in the Akan heartland.
No matter how hard his campaign team tries to court the Islamic and Northern constituencies, the Veep is not likely to lose many Akan and Christian voters because ethnic alliances and allegiances in Ghana typically radiate through the political parties to envelop the candidates rather than the other way around (very different from the case in Kenya and Nigeria in that sense). This allows them to be more daring and imaginative.
The only way the opposition can combat this new dynamic is to devise a plan of their own to shake the ruling party's Akan core.
After more thought, it is evident that more would be needed in terms of overall campaign machinery and message that would be effective in addressing the weak points in the Akan meta-identity. Remember that the opposition must narrow this substantial deficit before they can cross the line. Three years ago, the governing party won the presidential contest by a margin of 500,000 votes.
A contentious claim is that the "Akan Heartland" relates more to the areas of the Akan-dominated geography with consistent voting patterns than it does to all of the Akan regions. Coastal towns that are heavily urbanized, such as Cape Coast or Mankessim, are less receptive to the above-discussed strategies since they tend to fluctuate with the national mood.
There is indeed a great deal of confidence among the opposition to win the next elections. Their conviction stems from their perception that there are very significant electoral hazards associated with the Veep. Some claim that a sizable portion of evangelical Christians who fall into the swing voter group may object to supporting a Muslim candidate (Ghana has never had a president who is openly a Muslim). Some claim that the Veep will be ready material for caustic satirists come election season since he is so intricately linked to the current policy disarray.
The opposition has a great deal of confidence in winning the upcoming elections. Their conviction stems from their perception of the Veep as carrying many significant electoral dangers. According to some, a sizable portion of evangelical Christians who fall into the swing voter group may be reluctant to support a Muslim candidate because there has never been a publicly acknowledged Muslim president of Ghana. Some claim that the Prime Minister is so intricately linked to the recent policy disarray that when campaign season begins, he will be ready material for caustic satirists.
Veep has indeed made a strong case for himself as a digital advocate in recent years, and some claim that this "tilt" has now turned into a hard pivot as the economy has collapsed.
The effects of digitization are generally good but not spectacular. Hardcore policy aficionados, such as some of the readers of these pages, however, find fault with Veep's handling of the so-called digitalization agenda on many counts. Let's examine some of the most well-known flagships of digitalization.
DIGITAL ADDRESSING
Ghana has paid millions of dollars to a private app developer to reskin an existing digital application into a national geotagging platform.
This is true even if the aforementioned method only makes use of free and open-source mapping tools from the main geolocation platforms. The Veep and his group didn't discover this for years. Rather than implementing a comprehensive solution, he precipitously informed the nation three years prior that Google had consented to "upload" Ghana's mapping system onto its platform. However, at the time, this was utterly unnecessary, since Google already provided the Plus Codes system, which replicated all the features that Ghana's quaint customization ineffectively carried out. Nothing of the kind occurred.
If Ghana had engaged in more sincere engagement with the IT community, money might have been saved and resources could have been directed toward greater value-adding geolocation integration into service delivery rather than the replication of outdated geotagging systems. Instead of using the national system, all internet platforms now servicing Ghana just use Google or other foreign digital geolocation technologies.
NATIONAL ID
It is not a novel idea that national identity may serve as a vital basis for the provision of public services. The World Bank's 2014 ID4D program expands upon decades of policy awareness; some European countries introduced national IDs in 1938 and later, but their momentum stalled due to civil rights concerns. For example, the Ivorian national ID card program has been operational since 2001.
Unquestionably, since the country's attempts to implement a national ID system started in 2003, Ghanaian enrolment has never been faster or deeper thanks to Veep's patronage of the Ghana Card initiative. More people in Ghana than ever before own a safe form of identification that works with other online services.
However, the excessive profiteering approach taken by this institution has meant that much of the good it could have done has been lost. The system as it is now essentially serving as a cash cow for its innovative private sector "partners," who are effective controllers and owners of the underlying technical infrastructure rather than just contractors.
When the nation was essentially the target of extortion during the most recent huge voter registration drive, things reached a breaking point. Millions of dollars were required by the private contractors before the nation agreed to supply enough voter cards for first-time voters. Ultimately, it was necessary to give up on the idea of using the Ghana Card exclusively. After the exercise, it was discovered that more than 60% of young voters who were signing up for the first time lacked a Ghana Card. Exorbitant costs have hindered adequate coverage, even though the program is more than 40 times more expensive per person than India's well-acclaimed model.
Similarly, plans to integrate government services tightly have not materialized since doing so necessitates paying private contractors millions of dollars for basic database connectivity, which is a need for every state agency involved.
The private companies behind the Ghana Card are more interested in selling hardware terminals for card validation to financial institutions than they are in delivering a low-cost KYC mechanism over the internet to support the digital economy, undermining the government's promises of open banking. The Ghana Card was the only document needed for SIM card registration, however, telecom operators were unable to authenticate the cards instantly because of the Ministry of Communications' strong opposition to a similar attempt to force these terminals on telecom agents. The National Identification Authority's letters, which criticized the Ministry's strategy and insisted on selling these products and services, confused the nation.
Confusion may have peaked when an attempt to circumvent the Ghanaian passport and incorporate the nation's primary e-passport system into the Ghana Card led to absurd confrontations with the international organization in charge of matters, ICAO. Promises to force all of ECOWAS to adopt Ghana's e-Passport functionality model ultimately failed since, very plainly, the majority of nations would rather follow the pace and approach set by the ICAO. This is the result of a project that is purported to be for the benefit of the public but is driven mostly by profit.
As Vice President Bawumia championed some of the key reforms in the two terms of President Akufo Addo
AND A RAFT OF OTHERS
During the peak of his career as a digital champion, the Veep would constantly introduce new "transformative" digital projects every day. Upon closely examining the results of the majority of these initiatives, some extremely depressing findings emerge.
Ghana's Auditor General has released harsh reports detailing a decline in performance, including rising default rates, across activities like its PINCO, poultry, and tricycle-acquisition projects since MASLOC, one of the government's small business lending programs, was digitalized in 2020 to great fanfare as part of the Veep-led digitalization agenda, ostensibly to eliminate inefficiencies and graft.
The country was thrown into scandal after a controversy involving procurement, starting with the cathedral issue and continuing with the Bank of Ghana debacle, when the Veep introduced a nationwide e-procurement system in 2019 to address bid-rigging and other procurement abuses. Even the procurement control agency's chief was indicted at one time after being embroiled in an odd "tenders for sale" affair. Needless to say, the e-procurement system that the Veep introduced with great fanfare has not affected the majority of procurement bodies, including the central government.
CONCLUSION
To put it briefly, Veep's harsh turn from economic transformation to digitalization for transformation hasn't spared him or the governing party from the impending clash with the government's track record on policy in the 2024 elections.
His unprecedented rise has added a degree of uncertainty to Ghana's established political calculation, which should cause those in the opposition's electoral strategy team who are cheering for the government to fall in the 2024 elections to pause. It might be too soon for them to celebrate.
Right now, the 2024 checkerboard is only beginning to take shape, and half of it is obscured by the image of a guy getting ready for a rendezvous with fate.
