Ghana has a new vice president. Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur was vetted by Parliament and sworn-in on Monday, August 6. His appointment was necessitated by the accession of John Mahama as president of Ghana following the sudden death of President John Atta Mills on July 24, 2012.
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Amissah-Arthur |
Until
his new appointment, Amissah-Arthur, 61, a former deputy minister of finance,
was the governor of the central bank, the Bank of Ghana, (BoG). Forget about
the fact that he’s not a charismatic person. Ghanaians have now gotten used to having non-charismatic leaders.
His
appointment has generated mixed reaction from within the ruling NDC party. I think
the larger Ghanaian public is quite unsure about what he brings to the table
albeit he has played critical roles in crafting the country’s economic path
over the better part of the last three decades. He spent about half of his entire
working life at the Ministry of Finance.
Perhaps
what Ghanaians can relate to most is his last posting as governor of the BoG.
Amissah-Arther’s tenure at the BoG has seen the national currency, the Cedi,
decline sharply against nearly all major trading currencies especially since
the beginning of 2012.
Generally,
the national currency has tended to come under severe pressure in an election
year as this. And so there’s probably nothing new in the latest decline. What is
new however is that the person who presided over this decline is now the vice
president and the de facto head of the government’s Economic Management Team. A
case of more of the same? It could be but not necessarily.
How this
plays in the campaigns leading to the December 7, 2012 elections remains to be
seen.
Mahama
and Amissah-Arthur will serve out what remains of President John Atta Mills’
mandate. They will get the nod of the ruling party in September to contest the December
polls together as the party’s presidential candidate(s).
President
Mills’s departure, the orderly transition and impending presidential and
parliamentary elections in December have focused minds on the health of Ghana’s
democracy. The country has made some remarkable progress on the democratic path
as exemplified by the 2008 elections, transfer of power and the smooth process
leading to the assumption of office by a new president following the sudden
death of Mills.
However
Ghana’s democratic governance is beset with some deep-seated political problems.
The policy making process is heavily centralized and the executive president is
extremely powerful, too powerful for the good of the country. The system has
also bred a strong party loyalty. The system of political patronage is
neo-patrimonial, akin to single party form of governance. Equally debilitating
is the weak institutional capacity at both the regulatory and political levels.
I will
tackle some of these in a later blog.
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