Does Ghana need a parliamentary system of government?

Comment: “One constitutional reform Ghana should consider is transitioning from a presidential system of government to a parliamentary one. While both systems have advantages and drawbacks, adopting a parliamentary system could help reduce the political tensions that often characterize Ghana’s general elections. There is significant mistrust among political parties regarding the Electoral Commission’s work, and a parliamentary system could mitigate concerns about election rigging. Under the current presidential system, rigging an election in a single constituency or region could determine the presidency. However, gaining executive power would require winning majority seats across all 276 constituencies or 16 regions in a parliamentary system, making widespread election manipulation farmore challenging. The ongoing issues with re-collating the nine remaining parliamentary seats could have led to civil unrest if these constituencies were responsible for deciding the President of Ghana.”

Response: There are entrenched provisions and non-entrenched provisions in the constitution. An amendment of a non-entrenched provision requires at least two-thirds of MPs to vote in favor of the amendment.

Parliament plays a minimal role in the amendment of an entrenched provision. Its amendment requires a national referendum in which at least 40% of the electorate votes and at least 75% of those who voted favor the amendment. This is a tall order. Ghana’s presidential system is an entrenched provision. Parliament cannot change it to a parliamentary system (where the party with the majority of parliamentary seats forms the government). That requires a referendum with 75% of the voters endorsing it.

You say that “The ongoing issues with re-collating the nine remaining parliamentary seats could have led to civil unrest if these constituencies were responsible for deciding the President of Ghana.” Doesn’t this weaken your point that “adopting a parliamentary system could help reduce the political tensions that often characterize Ghana’s general elections.”?

Mistrust and the incentives to rig do not stem from whether we have a presidential system or a parliamentary system. Americans trusted their presidential system and believed that it was devoid of vote-rigging or vote-rigging was trivial until Trump and his MAGA folks came along. Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy. But “Pakistanis voted Thursday in national parliamentary elections, but people headed to polling stations under tense circumstances a day after deadly bomb blasts targeted politicians and amid allegations of electoral misconduct. The violence — and the government’s decision to limit communications on election day — fueled concerns about the integrity of the democratic process in a country with 128 million eligible voters… the communications blackout was really an attempt to suppress the vote, as many Pakistanis use cellular services to determine their local polling station.”

(https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pakistan-2024-election-marred-by-violence-allegations-of-electoral-misconduct/). Bangladesh is also a parliamentary democracy. But “Elections in Bangladesh have historically been marked by violence between the country’s two dominant political parties, the ruling Awami League (AL) and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The upcoming elections scheduled for 7 January are no different. Violence has already been on the rise in the months leading up to the elections, in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will seek re-election for the fourth consecutive term.” (https://acleddata.com/2024/01/04/the-violent-politics-of-bangladeshs-2024-elections/)

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we had a parliamentary system. With 276 seats, the party with at least 139 seats will form the government. Vote-rigging will take a different form: inflate votes in a constituency just enough to win the constituency. Rigging no longer requires a lot of effort. In the race to get to at least 139 seats, there will be violence, disputes, and allegations of vote-rigging just like it is in Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc IF the people do not trust each other and are determined to rig the election.

You say that “Under the current presidential system, rigging an election in a single constituency or region could determine the presidency.”

So long as we have weak monitoring mechanisms and lack of vigilance, we cannot change the incentive to rig by switching from a presidential system to a parliamentary system. The Greater Accra region has more registered voters than the Ashanti region. However, some people worry more about vote-rigging in the Ashanti region because Greater Accra is seen as a swing state while Ashanti is the NPP’s region. In 2024, there were 18,774,159 registered voters of which 3, 774,159 were in the Ashanti region (https://ec.gov.gh/summary-of-2024-certified-voter-register/). Assuming a uniform rigging-free (vigilance) turnout of 70% in each region, 15 million voters in regions (other than Ashanti) will determine the election, even if the NPP got all the votes in the Ashanti region.

Consider this: X + Y must be greater than 100. To get more than 100, we may hold X fixed and then say that Y is the decisive factor or we hold Y fixed and say X is the decisive factor. The truth is that both X and Y are necessary. The votes alone in the Ashanti region are not enough. In 2020, Nana Addo got about 1.142 million more votes than Mahama in the Ashanti region. But this was not why Nana Addo won the election. It was because Nana Addo also got enough votes in the other 15 regions. If Bawumia had beaten Mahama by the same (Nana Addo’s) margin in the Ashanti region, he would still have lost the election because he didn’t get enough votes in the other 15 regions.

The number of registered voters in the Greater Accra region is about 3.11 times the corresponding number in the Northern region. Yet, Accra (with 34 seats) has less than 3.11 times the parliamentary seats in the Northern region (with18 seats): https://peacefmonline.com/elections/interactive/voter-register/2024; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parliamentary_constituencies_of_Ghana. Proportionality requires that Accra should have about 3.11 times 18 = 56 seats, twenty-two more seats than it currently has. Thus, any electoral system (like the parliamentary system) that does not use the popular vote and produces a different outcome, in principle, gives a different weight to the weights of voters in different regions. In the preceding example, it is as though the vote of a person in the Northern region is given a bigger weight than the vote of a person in the Greater Accra region. There are legitimate grounds for arguing that this is not fair to a voter in the Greater Accra.

Consider a parliamentary system under which regional seats are allocated proportionally. Suppose 1/5 of registered voters are in region A, and so region A is given 1/5 of the total seats in parliament. Assume that the CCC party usually gets 80% of the seats in this region. To get at least half of the seats in parliament, CCC must get at least 42.5% of the seats in other regions. Given 80% of the popular vote for CCC in region A and the same turnout in each region, getting at least half of the popular vote also requires getting at least 42.5% of the vote in other regions.Therefore, if parliamentary seats are allocated proportionally to the size of regions (the number of registered voters), there may no difference between presidential systems and parliamentary systems in terms of the party that wins executive power. In reality, parliamentary seats, as shown above, are not allocated proportionally.

Under a presidential winner-takes-all system, the votes of the losing candidates are given a weight of zero. Fair? Not really. Under a parliamentary system, the votes of each of the losing candidates in a constituency are given a weight of zero.

Proportional representation(PR), under which every vote counts, has been proposed as a solution to the problem of a winner-takes-all electoral rule in parliamentary and presidential democracies. Party-list PR is the most commonly used version of proportional representation. Parties provide lists of candidates to be elected. Voters cast votes for parties and each party is allocated seats based on its party share. Seats are distributed by election authorities to each party, in proportion to the number of votes the party receives. PR is used in Spain, Turkey, Israel in Finland, Brazil, the Netherlands, New Zealand, etc (https://aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/es/annex/esy/esy_nz/mobile_browsing/onePag)

Written in May 2022: In the 2012 parliamentary elections, the total number of valid votes in all constituencies was 10,995,262. The NPP’s parliamentary candidates got a total of 5,574,761 votes, representing 50.7% of votes. Under proportional representation, the NPP would have had a small majority (about 50.7%) of seats in parliament. Under the first-past-the-post formula, the NPP had 122 seats (44.36% of the 275 seats) and the NDC had 248 seats (53.81%).

Therefore, under proportional representation, the NPP would have held a very slim parliamentary majority from January 2013 to January 2017. What difference would this have made? It is instructive to look at the conduct of our MPs in our hung parliament. The choice of the speaker was contentious (Carlos Ahenkorah snatched the ballot box and was “slapped”). There was a brawl over the e-levy. Whether a presiding deputy speaker could vote became so contentious (it was never a subject of debate in previous years), etc. Under proportional representation, the stakes in our parliamentary elections will become much higher. Just like presidential elections, there will be a fierce contest to get at least 50% of all parliamentary votes. Each parliamentary election will no longer be an isolated election in a constituency. It will be seen within the context of a national parliamentary election. The popular vote will become important because a party’s number of seats in parliament will be determined proportionally according to its popular vote.

Proportional representation has some advantages. For example, it may give smaller parties a voice (e.g., the CPP may get 1 or 2 seats), although it is unlikely to weaken the duopoly power of the NPP and NDC. It is possible for first-past-the-post to result in a hung parliament while proportional representation may result in a clear parliamentary majority. So, although the NPP and NDC both got 137 seats in the 2020 parliamentary elections, it is likely that one of them got significantly more than 50% of all parliamentary votes. A disadvantage is that it leads to a fragmentation of votes and too many small parties in parliament that stifle decision-making.

The tyranny of the majority is a non-trivial risk/outcome in both parliamentary and presidential systems. Regardless of the system, we need men and women of integrity who will, as much as possible, govern in a fair and inclusive manner.

By Prof. J. Atsu Amegashie

December 29, 2024