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Political parties in Ghana, in the most part of the Fourth Republic, have adopted a controlled inclusive (delegate system), where the power to select parliamentary candidates is decentralised and consolidated in the hands of a body of electors at the basic unit of political party administration (i.e., the branch level), allowing for candidates to be selected through parliamentary primary.
This process indeed reflects the US closed system of selection process, where a selected body is delegated to elect candidates on their behalf.
The conduct of parliamentary primaries to select candidates is thus guided by party constitutions and the election rules and guidelines the political parties may issue.
As required by the Constitution of Ghana, these processes must conform to democratic principles as much as practicable.
Owing to this, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) provides for the election of Parliamentary Candidates in Article 11 of its Constitution.
Similarly, Article 43 of the Constitution of the NDC provides for the election of Parliamentary Candidates.
These party constitutional provisions form the framework out of which specific electoral rules and guidelines are issued to direct and guide the selection process.
Among others, these guidelines often reflect the following: The timetable for the election, the form of the election, the qualification criteria for prospective candidates, the fees and the Electoral College.
Since the adoption of the delegate system, there have been reforms often done through a trial-and-error method in a bid to expand the electoral colleges in the two dominant political parties (i.e., the NDC and NPP), to presumably reflect the growing need for participation in the electoral process.
For instance, the NPP set the pace by expanding its electoral college to allow for five branch executives instead of one, as it were to vote in its parliamentary and presidential primaries in the run-up to the 2012 general elections.
This saw an astronomical increase (to about 144,000) in the number of delegates forming the electoral college of the party.
Following this, the NDC, just like the Botswana Democratic Party did in 2001, adopted the open-to-all process, where all card-bearing members of the party in all 6,000 polling stations were eligible to vote in both presidential and parliamentary elections in 2015. In all, about 1,286,728 members were registered at the various polling stations and were thus eligible to vote.
The delegate system, with a small electorate composed of branch-level leaders of the party, is a reflection of representative democracy.
To decentralise and deconcentrate power from the centre to the local level for party leaders to elect their preferred representatives is paramount in a democracy.
However, this exclusive delegate system has its own downsides.
Where primary electorates are small, individual primary voters have significant leverage to extract rents from the competing aspirants in return for support.
This serves as a convenient ground for creating and accentuating a client-patron relationship which ultimately reinforces vote buying.
This system, with vote buying at the centre effectively selects for and attracts aspirants with the necessary financial resources and not necessarily a candidate who otherwise would have represented the people effectively.
Party executives at the branch level who are privileged to be part of the electors see the exercise as a means to get remuneration other than to represent the general interest of the party members.
The delegate system overtly and covertly creates limitations to popular participation and could thus exclude some sections of people from participating in the democratic process.
For instance, women have become victims of such a highly controlled and competitive selection process, given how rigorous the process can be, is vis a vis the fragility and vulnerability of women.
Although in most cases, party leaders at the centre create opportunities for women in particular by reducing the filing fees to be paid, this in itself mostly does not amount to an opportunity for women to be elected.
This is one of the factors that contribute to the poor number of women in Ghana’s current Parliament.
Also, this system mostly breeds voter apathy, since the majority of the voters may feel betrayed because of the choices of candidates made by the selected delegates.
Voter apathy in itself is a subtle means of disenfranchising eligible voters and, by extension, constraining the frontiers of democracy in general.
Another major downside is the tendency of the creation of weaker party machinery at the base.
Desperate but financially resourceful aspirants may plant their puppets for convenient exploitation but not necessarily to build the base of the party.
These aspirants may succeed to get themselves imposed on the people by their puppets.
In sharp contrast to the all-inclusive system of candidate selection is the exclusive system, where a political party has an extremely centralised system of selecting candidates for onward sponsorship.
With this system, a single party leader or a national party agency or committee is constituted to decide on the candidates to be selected without the approval or participation of the local party members or delegates (selectors).
In European Parliament, the MPs are elected with two votes; first for a direct candidate and the second for a party list in each state, as may be determined by the respective parties.
The party list is always prepared by the political parties and submitted to the national election machinery for onward election.
Where the list is closed as practiced in countries like Angola, Argentina, Spain, etc., the power of selecting candidates is exclusive to the party agency or committee.
Prior to the democratisation of the candidate selection process in the 1996 election, Israel's ultra-orthodox religious party’s candidate selection in the early years was purely by nomination by a closed inner circle of party leaders (Council of Rabbis) or a single leader (Rabbi).
Even as late as 1992, the selection process of the Meretz alliance in Israel (i.e., the three “dovish” parties: Ratz, Mapam and Shinui) was conducted solely by the central committees of the three constituent parties.
This system, although extremely exclusive, which practically frustrates popular participation and may, thus, engineer voter apathy to some extent, is cost-effective and eliminates vote-buying completely.
The three selection methods of candidates as assessed above present a general overview of how political parties, as private entities, exercise power in the bid to determine how the legislature operates.
The absolute inclusive system presents a fine opportunity for popular participation, where the vast majority of voters will have the opportunity to participate in electing their candidate.
This comes in two forms: an open system, where voters (not necessarily registered party members) are offered the opportunity to elect candidates; or a closed primaries system, which is exclusive to all registered members of the political party.
Given Ghana’s economic and political development, it is practically impossible for this cumbersome and extremely expensive system to be practiced by her political parties at all times, with strict adherence to democratic ideals.
The delegate system, although has come a long way as a viable and reliable vehicle for selecting both Presidential and Parliamentary candidates for political parties to sponsor for ultimate election into government, still has its attendant challenges.
It has inadvertently encouraged vote-buying and limited popular participation in Ghana.
Some pundits described it as more expensive than even running for general elections.
The exclusive system of selection, where the selection is done by a committee or party agency so constituted to do so, can be safely described as undemocratic, since the decision of selection of candidates is left to either an individual or committee with some guidelines to follow.
The reality with Ghana’s current dispensation is that political parties will largely sketch a democratic path that they rarely follow in selecting parliamentary candidates.
In order to control monetisation (vote-buying) of the election of parliamentary candidates, and avoid the overstretching of the party machinery in organising election, it will be reasonable to suggest that the exclusive selection process (i.e., appointment/nomination of candidates) can be refined with effective legislation to still meet the democratic requirement being pursued by the 1992 Constitution.
After all, except the NDC and the NPP with the capacity to be organising such periodic elections, almost all the smaller political parties in Ghana adopt the centralised system of selecting Parliamentary Candidates.
Although democratic ideals would encourage decentralisation at the expense of concentration, a well-structured exclusive system for the nomination of Parliamentary Candidates by party caucuses/agencies/committees will be the best to cure the growing overspending by aspirants.
The expensive nature of the delegate system, as being practised currently in Ghana, undoubtedly creates the breeding ground for weak governments and corrupt leaders to start with.
The writer is a senior aide to former President John Dramani Mahama
