Nii Armah Josiah-Aryeh
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2001 to 2004 was arguably the most turbulent period of competitive democratic politics in Ghana’s history. It was the period the author Dr Nii Armah Josiah-Aryeh was General Secretary of the largest Opposition Party, the National Democratic Congress. McCarthyist intrigue was directed toward NDC and its predecessor PNDC which had ruled Ghana for 19 of the 44 years of independence, with Flt Lt Rawlings as leader. Rawlings now constitutionally ineligible to stand, the NDC was defeated at the 2000 elections. Remarkably, Western powers so desperate to remove Rawlings, sat back to witness events that could easily have derailed their long cherished dream. Besieged by Government and its agencies, the author also had to contend with the ruthless, ambitious NDC Chairman Dr Obed Asamoah who, after being overlooked for NDC Presidential candidacy post Rawlings, had locked horns with factions even remotely identified with Rawlings. The eve of the 2004 elections saw the author caught in a Sting orchestrated by the Government, whereby a conversation with functionaries was doctored to indicate he would accept favours in exchange for resignation. INSIDE GHANA'S DEMOCRACY is the author's gripping account of that bombshell and Obed's war against the NDC. With undisputed integrity, the author reveals the heart of darkness of Ghana politics, both of ruthless NDC internal machinations as well as the antidemocratic intrigue of the ruling NPP. The book beats a path-blazing genre in Ghanaian political autobiography while painting a captivating cultural landscape of Ghana. It would attract a worldwide audience interested in knowing the trying conditions of democracy in developing countries. And those fascinated with Ghana, a country both careful and careless in self management, but which manages to keep afloat under adversity while her neighbours seem not quite able to achieve similar stability under lesser rancour.
Dr Nii Armah Josiah-Aryeh was born in 1958 at Jamestown in Accra. From Accra High School and Achimota School, he read English, Modern History and Law at University of Ghana and was active in student politics. He was called to the Bar in 1983. In April 1984 he left for the UK on self-financed postgraduate education, where he obtained LLM (LSE), Certificate in Law Teaching (UC, London) and PhD (SOAS). He returned to Ghana in January 1998 as a private legal practitioner and Lecturer at his alma mater. His weekly Upper-Cut articles for the mass-selling Daily Graphic established him as an incisive thinker on national affairs. In 2000 he unsuccessfully stood for parliament but went on to become General Secretary of the main opposition NDC at arguably the most turbulent period of competitive democratic politics in Ghana’s history. Shortly after 2004 elections he was suspended from the General Secretary position following allegations of intended defection for monetary gains. The allegations have since proven to be false and he remains an NDC member. In the last 3 years he has produced legal texts - Ghana Law of Wills, Property Law of Ghana, Islamic Customary Law in Ghana, and co-edited Ghana Law Since Independence, published by his Faculty of Law as part of Ghana’s Golden Jubilee celebrations. However, it is his present work, INSIDE GHANA’S DEMOCRACY that provides the most profound insight into Dr Josiah-Aryeh’s thoughts on politics and his role at the heart of Ghana’s emerging democratic institutions. It is a story of passion, selflessness, nostalgia, enthusiasm and betrayal. Yet Dr Josiah-Aryeh remains optimistic for both democracy in Ghana and the NDC’s own prospects. This book is a must for all who want insight into the covert forces behind Ghanaian politics as well as the dangers of semi-developed party politics.
On “INSIDE GHANA'S DEMOCRACY”, George Commodore, Former Chairman of the Ablekuma South NDC, writes:
Our nation has known many follies, but the folly of devoting miles of newsprint to chronicling the alleged errors of action of a man in high office, when nothing whatsoever has been proven surpasses them all. As with so many schemes motivated by spite, they have only succeeded in elevating the man’s moral stature. The hard facts are but vaguely known. No account of the surrounding events approaches anything like reality in its details. The attempt to destroy the NDC from within reached its height by the end of 2004 and was sustained until many elements of the then executive were ousted. The ousted elements then embarked upon a most extraordinary attempt to destroy the Party from without by forming the Democratic Freedom Party, ostensibly to contest national elections but in reality to attack and dismember the NDC.
ON POWER AND FORCE, the author writes:
The word ‘force’ is preferred here to ‘power’ to describe the driving motive of the Chairman; for if he understood power, he would recognise that I had been granted a mandate by the delegates who voted for me and that he was under obligation to assist the full realisation of that mandate. His idea of ‘force’ was the use of physical force, something more directly compelling than power as conventionally understood. His understanding of power was in terms of a cruder manifestation of domination in human relations relying on predatory instincts for seizure and destruction, the destruction of boundaries and trespasses into remits. Such power is limited in operation and time; it soon wears itself out. It relies on stealth and deception to snatch its prey and to mislead, depending on the law of the predator, the law of the jungle. It is bereft of the ceremonies, conventions and the calm patience that characterise civilised power. Ultimately, respect for civilised rules is a far more dynamic and effective in providing leadership.
ON EFFECT OF HIS DEMISE ON PARTY MEMBERS, the author writes:
It was Machiavelli who posed the riddle: “From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved more than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is that one ought to be both loved and feared, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours; they offer you their blood, their goods, their life and their children” By publicising my fate as an example of what opposition to Obed can do, the man succeeded in making himself feared the more. Quietly, it stirred a hornet’s nest among Rawlings’ most reliable allies.
ON THE RULING NPP'S BRAND OF POLITICS, the author writes:
The leading figures in the NPP administration were split between the old generation of conservatives and the current generation of activists and high office holders who cut their teeth on anti-Rawlings propaganda. The old generation was largely embittered remnants of the losers of the Rawlings revolutions. Nothing could shift their bitterness. They employed every tool of state to keep the NDC in opposition where it was, and even to destroy it permanently. The younger generation was more excitable and keen to push in different directions; they were attracted by the material and bent on using power as an instrument for wealth acquisition. The Ashanti Region remained the stronghold of the NPP. Its inner circle and leading positions were monopolised by people from that region. In the pork barrel politics introduced by the NPP this meant that contracts and procurements ended up in the hands of people connected to the most powerful persons in the inner sanctum of the NPP. It led naturally to nepotism. Members of this privileged network constituted a self-preserving and self-perpetuating inner circle that drove government. They determined appointments, built a war chest, feathered their own nests, controlled succession within the party; and being privy to all manner of damaging information about cabinet ministers and senior appointees, used them to destroy others. Their fates were tied to each other’s. Thus nepotism fed nepotism. It was a provocative trespass upon the boundaries of good governance.
ON THE PLIGHT OF THE NATIVES OF ACCRA, the author writes:
Like the rest of Accra the Odododiodoo constituency had witnessed a sustained and dramatic explosion of population without a commensurate expansion in public amenities. Outlying land came under the control of chiefs, families and headmen who sold parcels to the lowest bidders. The concept of land as an ancestral trust was progressively whittled down. There was clearly lacking a clear concept of the future to guide development. Perceptions of the future appeared voguish: a good general education, providing an ability to speak English followed by salaried or self employment and a self-focused passage through life. The past was dark and unrecorded and provided little general guidance as to future direction. What was required was a reworking of a concept of community. There is also a marked absence of clear doctrine around which human actions cohere and proceed. This appears to me to provide the explanatory key to much of our failings. Even worse, inconsiderate land grabs by successive governments had left the people well and truly landless. It goes back to the Supreme Court Ordinance of 1876 by which the Gold Coast was colonised. The vesting of legislative power in a British Governor and, after Independence, in elected and unelected governments, totally took from local people the power to decide their own land rights. A certain degree of both judicial and legislative schizophrenia was imposed on Accra.
