The Member of Parliament (MP) for Nadowli/Kaleo, Mr Alban Bagbin, has stressed the need for Ghana to change from the ‘winner-takes- all’ system of governance to the proportional representation system.
According to him, the ‘winner- takes-all’ system of governance has not served a good purpose for the nation and so there is the need to consider alternative systems of governance such as the proportional representation.
‘It’s a kind of system that will be better than the ‘winner-takes-all’,’ he said at a roundtable discussion in Accra last Monday.
Purpose of discussion
The roundtable discussion was organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in collaboration with The Netherlands Institute of Multiparty Democracy and the Global Leaders Forum (GLF).
A delegation from the GLF, including a former President of Botswana, Mr Ketumile Masire; a former President of Switzerland, Mr Kasper Villiger; the Co-director of the Oxford Institute of Global Economic Development, Prof. Paul Collier, and a former Zambian Minister of Finance, Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane, participated in the discussion.
It was on the topic: ‘Making Ghana’s natural resources count’ and formed part of an initiative by the IEA to engage key stakeholders in discussing critical issues of national concern.
Politics
Mr Babgin said the country’s hybrid system of governance was not well- defined, and for that matter, some institutions of government, especially Parliament, were often undermined.
He said, ‘Parliament is now in the belly of the Executive’, pointing out that there was the need to strengthen the Legislature to enable it to discharge its functions more effectively.
Mr Bagbin said many Ghanaians had a narrow understanding of democracy, which they interpreted in Akan as ‘kabi ma me nkabi’, to wit, ‘Let’s put across ideas’.
He added that the inherent problem in such mentality was that any suggestion that came from one side of the political divide was often rejected by the other side without considering the merits therein.
Consensus building
Prof. Collier said it was difficult to build consensus in a multiparty democracy where the ‘winner-takes- all’ system of governance operated, unlike in a coalition government.
The MP for Sekondi, Papa Owusu-Ankomah, said even under the prevailing ‘winner- takes-all’ system of governance, it was possible to build consensus in Parliament.
He indicated that Ghanaians seemed to have an ‘Esau mentality’, by which they sought gratification now without considering its ramifications for the future.
He expressed the hope that ‘we’ll try to do things better’. The MP for Keta, Mr Richard Quarshigah, wondered whether consensus-building was possible under the circumstances because ‘we don’t seem to walk the talk’.
He cited the recent National Economic Forum held at Senchi, saying that although some MPs of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had mooted the idea in Parliament, the opposition party boycotted the event.
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