 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 Nanakoffaro has been sworn in for the second term, very contentious election. It has been contested, John Mahama 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 you know 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 Mahama they've raised. So maybe talk to talk us through what are the basic claims and what is the kind of action happening on them. The results of this election clearly point us to increase polarization political polarization of Ghana. In the presidential elections there were 12 candidates which contested 11 candidates representing political parties and one independent candidate. 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 itself resulted in eight deaths eight people died as a result of this election which is unprecedented in our history I mean not since the Fourth Republic of 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 four 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 Ghanaian 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 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 lead to improving you know the living conditions of the people? What are the rules if they don't lead to a situation where people you know 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 you know without taking into account the people's interests which are to be central in all of these you know discussions. We've also seen some violence you know 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 you know 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 ballots snatching where a member of parliament actually went and snatched ballots and tried to run away with them. You had instances of attempted stopping of ballots. You have instances where the rules and regulations were not obeyed. You had instances where security personnel and 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 John Romani 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're also confused about the future of this country you know 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 does this there is there a possibility of governance or even basic governance itself grinding to some kind of you know slowing down considerably because of the polarization as well that you 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 you know 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 we 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 you know the opposition has demonstrated you know a certain practical 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 you know so through this tactical maneuvering the opposition now controls parliament and if they don't recognize the president he does raise you know a number of issues and normal 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 help 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 tenths of total national revenue on on on redevelopment of debt and and and debt servicing that means very little in fact what is left is not enough to pay public sector and monuments 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 about we talked last time about the campaigns that both the candidates have mounted and the kind of promises they've made so do you see any particular trends or patterns either nationally or regionally that emerge with respect to how these candidates promises or agenda has been received well the vast majority of people know that these political parties do not keep their promises i mean in the in the 2016 election the governing party promised everything one factory per district you know 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 you know to vote for one particular party or the other again the fundamental problems for a 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 you know 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 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 are 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 brettan wood institutions imf and the world park 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 uh 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 stillness 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 true and to support both sides is is interesting um 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 economy community of west african states is keen on building an outpost in ganna in order to deny the people of western sahara you know their right to self-determination and and they played a key role in in 2016 supporting the the governing party and so on of course the united states itself is in turmoil it's so confused that uh one is not sure what it's likely to do internally not to talk about it's likely to do externally and so on but all kinds of interests are also at play and uh 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 to resolve the the impasse which now exists and finally just wanted to ask you a question about at this point of time what uh trade unions radical movements and progressive movements in the country what is the kind of response in the time the period since the election what is the kind of response that they've been thinking through in terms of the next step to sort of address the political crisis that you're seeing and the social crisis well gonna have to be a very peculiar country i mean the midst of all of those our trade union movement is silent absolutely silent and that's very very strange you understand um fitbit institutions are silent they are not speaking very much you know um people in the 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 interest 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 to cook to drain for survival so water becomes a very important issue we 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 polska crisis this polska crisis how does it reflect on people's aspirations and how that the resolution of the polska crisis lead to improving the quality of life of people this is the direction this is the direction absolutely right thank you so much for talking to us