 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we're joined by Kwesi Prath Jr of Pan African Television and we're going to be talking about the situation, the political situation in Ghana. Thank you so much for joining us and last month we talked to you just before the elections where you mentioned how the context was expected to be tried between the new patriotic party and the NDC, which is the main opposition party. And like you said, it was a very tight contest, both the presidential and the parliamentary elections. And one of the things you also highlighted was the essential similarity these days between both of them. So we now see that last week President Nanakufado has been sworn in for the second term, very contentious election. It has been contested. John Muhammad, the opposition candidate, has challenged the results in court and there was some violence in the aftermath of the election as well. Similarly last week in parliament, again, quiet riotous scenes where members of parliament where there was a scuffle, if I'm not mistaken, the army was ordered in and a lot of questions being raised about the future. So we wanted to talk to you about some of these. So maybe could you first throw some light on the immediate aftermath of the elections, especially the claims of contestation that the opposition NDC and the candidate John Muhammad have raised. So could you maybe talk to talk us through what are the basic claims and what is the kind of action happening on them? But there was also this election clearly point us to increase polarization, political polarization of Ghana. If you take the presidential elections, there were 12 candidates which contested 11 candidates representing political parties and one independent candidate. Yeah, most of the votes went to two political parties. You know, two political parties had more than 90 percent of the total votes cast. In fact, if you take the National Democratic Congress and the new patriotic party, each of their presidential candidate had a little over six million, you know, votes leading and that shows the extent to which this country is polarized. The election is all itself resulted in eight deaths. Eight people died as a result of this election, which is unprecedented in our history. I mean, not saying the future public have eight people died in one election. There's a lot of violence, the deployment of extra, you know, police forces and so on. And the results are contested. They are still being contested in a number of constituencies. As things stand now, the new patriotic party has been declared to have 137 seats in parliament. And the National Democratic Congress has also been declared to have 137 seats in parliament with one independent candidate. But the election results have been contested in six different constituencies, and that's very significant. In the last parliament, the new patriotic party had a majority of about 69. It is now 50-50. To the extent that the Ghanian parliament today, there's no majority and there's no minority. And all the parliamentary rules have been written on the basis of majority party and minority party. So we now have a new situation we have to contend with, you understand? Now, what is worrying is that all of this dispute, all the discourse in parliament and around parliament is about rules and regulations and so on. We are not paying attention to the fact that parliament, like any of the state institutions, like the judiciary, like the executive and so on, is not there for its own sake. It's there to achieve clear objectives. What are the rules if they don't need to improve the living conditions of the people? What are the rules if they don't lead to a situation where people are able to express themselves and to participate in the political process? What are the rules if, in the final analysis, it has not delinquent the national economy from the colonial metropolis and so on? But these are issues which are not being discussed. We are discussing rules for rules sake without taking into account the people's interests which are to be central in all of these discussions. We've also seen some violence, not just at the national political level, but also in the chamber of parliament. And for the first time in our history, members of parliament were actually exchanging blows in parliament. And we had a situation where all the allegations which were made in the general elections were displayed in parliament. We had incidents of ballot snatching where a member of parliament actually went and snatched ballots and tried to run away with them. We had instances of attempted stopping of ballots. We have instances where the rules and regulations were not obeyed. We had instances where security personnel, armed security personnel were introduced into parliament in order to resolve issues and so on. Now, the situation is troubling. It's exceedingly troubling. And the former president, his Excellency Gondramani Muhammad, has actually filed a petition in the Supreme Court. Now, this is a Supreme Court, 11 of whose members were appointed by the current administration. And that raises all kinds of issues about whether or not the Supreme Court can be trusted or not trusted and so on. And we are waiting to see what is likely to happen. We understand. The electoral commission itself has changed election results six times already. The first result that they released did not make sense mathematically because they released results of an election which was in excess of 100 percent, which is a mathematical impossibility, you understand. And thereafter, they changed the results indeed six times already. So it's not clear what is likely to happen. What is clear is that we are now in the midst of confusion, total confusion about the figures. We are in the midst of total confusion about who won and so on. And we are also confused about the future of this country. What is going to happen with the election petition? What if the Supreme Court decided one way or the other? That's the crisis that you are in now. Absolutely. Right. And in this context, I wanted to ask you a bit about the kind of situation you have mentioned where parliament is almost completely split in half. Like you said, it's an unprecedented situation. And the speaker of the parliament is, of course, from the opposition party, which I believe is again for the first time. And we have a president who has come to power in a very controversial manner. So is there a possibility of governance or even basic governance itself grinding to some kind of slowing down considerably because of the polarization as well that you've mentioned? Well, the opposition has said very clearly, and that was yesterday, that they do not recognize the president as president. Now, that means a lot. I mean, they don't recognize the president as president. How is he going to be able to present a budget, and whether or not that budget is going to be approved? His ministers are supposed to be vetted by parliament and so on. There are so many issues. And if they don't recognize him as president, there will be limitations to how he can exercise his power as president, especially as the opposition controls parliament. The opposition has demonstrated a certain tactical superiority. They got a speaker elected that they nominated, but the speaker is not a member of parliament. Then they got the governing side to accept the position of first deputy speaker, which means that the governing side has lost one member of parliament. Anytime he sits in the chair, he can no longer vote. And then they got the independent candidate to also accept the position of second deputy speaker. So that vote is also lost to the government. So through this tactical maneuvering, the opposition now controls parliament. And if they don't recognize the president, it does raise a number of issues, a number of problems. Now, I think it's important for us to also understand clearly that Ghana has very serious economic problems, exceedingly serious economic problems. As we speak, the government of Ghana owns independent power producers in excess of 1.7 billion dollars. We understand. And the independent power producers are actually threatening to shut down electricity supply. Now, if they do shut down electricity supply, everything grinds to a halt. Education, health, everything grinds to a halt. Now, you need some kind of consensus to get over these kinds of problems. And yet this is the situation we have. So it is predicted that we could very soon, you know, end up in total darkness across the country. And that would affect industry, to affect everything, you understand. Now beyond that, Ghana now is spending two-thirds of total national revenue on redevelopment of debt and debt servicing. That means very little. In fact, what is left is not enough to pay public sector a monument alone. There's a huge crisis. There's a huge hole, you know, in the national economy. And this political crisis does not help us in any way at all. I mean, Ghana is obviously grinding to a halt. And I'm really worried and frightened about what is likely to happen. And just going back, maybe a bit to the results of the elections themselves. In terms of, we talked last time about the campaigns that both the candidates have mounted and the kind of promises they have made. So do you see any particular trends or patterns, either nationally or regionally that emerged with respect to how these candidates' promises or agenda has been received? Well, the vast majority of our people know that these political parties do not keep their promises. And in the 2016 election, the governing party promised everything, one factory per district, one dam per village, everything. They promised everything and they could not deliver. Of course, the state of the national economy said that these promises cannot be delivered. They are only made to entice people to vote for one particular party or the other. Again, the fundamental problems of our country are not featured in these promises. One of the main difficulties we have is that we endowed with natural resources. We endowed with oil and gas. We endowed with diamond, with manganese, all kinds of things. One of the fundamental problems is that these resources are not owned by the people of Ghana and are not exploited for the purpose of solving the problems of the people of Ghana. And these do not feature in the election promises made by the two main political parties. The two main political parties appear to be satisfied with the status quo, with giant companies from the West control all of our resources and, in fact, the beneficiaries of the exploitation of these resources and so on. So the promises they make are usually very unrealistic promises. I mean, if you promise free university education, you've got to be telling us about how you're going to finance free university education. Free university education has to be financed, you understand. And for as long as you don't control your natural resources, for as long as major economic decisions are not made in country but are made by the Bretton Wood institutions, IMF and the World Bank and so on, you are not able to fulfill these promises, even though some of the promises may be lovable and so on. But at this point of time, whether something, again, we discussed the last time, whether foreign countries, especially from the West, you mentioned the abundance of resources, whether there is the risk of, say, backroom interventions by diplomatic channels or anything of those lines as well. Well, we do know for a fact that the Israeli intelligence community played a key role in pushing us to the stalemate. Indeed, there were Israeli intelligence people working for the governing party and there were Israeli intelligence people working for the opposition party. And how one intelligence group decided to divide itself into two and to support both sides is interesting. We know, for example, that the situation in Western Sahara would have some manifestation in what we're doing here, because Morocco is keen on joining the economic community of West African states, is keen on building an outpost in Ghana in order to deny the people of Western Sahara their right to self-determination. And they played a key role in 2016 supporting the governing party and so on. Of course, the United States itself is in turmoil. It's so confused that one is not sure what it's likely to do internally, not to talk about what it's likely to do externally and so on. But all kinds of interests are also at play. And again, for us, radical forces, revolutionary forces and so on, the question must always be the living and working conditions of the masses of our people. That should be at the center of the discussion of foreign policy. It should be at the center of the discussion of internal policy. It should be at the center of the efforts to resolve the impasse which now exists. And finally, just wanted to ask you a question about, at this point of time, what trade unions, radical movements and progressive movements in the country, what is the kind of response in the period since the election, what is the kind of response that they've been thinking through in terms of the next step to address the political crisis that you see and the social crisis? Well, Ghana happens to be a very peculiar country. I mean, in the midst of all of this, a trade union movement is silent, absolutely silent. And that's very, very strange, you understand. Fitbit institutions are silent. They are not speaking very much. People in the legal profession are silent and so on. And the only persons making loud noises are still people in the traditional political divide. And that doesn't give us hope at all. I think that the way forward is for radical organizations, revolutionary organizations, left organizations, to increasingly stress on the interests of the people and to organize around the interests of the people, which is nothing, you know, exotic. People's access to water is critical. Forget about the rules and so on. All of that, what does it mean to improving people's access to water, which is vital for human survival? Everybody needs clean water to cook, to drink for survival. So water becomes a very important issue, you understand. Housing is a critical issue for everybody, especially for the underprivileged people in our society. So all of this, what does it mean for people's access to housing, quality housing and so on? Education, health and so on. These are the issues that we need to focus attention on and to move people in that direction. Yes, there's a political crisis. This political crisis, how does it reflect on people's aspirations? And how does the resolution of the postcard crisis lead to improving the quality of life of people? This is the direction, this is the optimum direction. Absolutely. Thank you so much for talking to us.