One Election, Two Victories: Ghana’s 2016 General Elections Revisited
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One Election, Two Victories: Ghana’s 2016 General Elections Revisited
This article examines election-related violence that characterizes some electoral processes across Africa. The
study thematically focused on two dominant political parties in Ghana, thus the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National
Democratic Congress (NDC) in respect of the December 2016 Presidential election. These two political parties have alternated
executive power in Ghana since the birth of the Fourth Republic in January 1993, with Ghana having failed to maintain the
status quo immediately after independence from British colonial rule. The claims and counterclaims of victory immediately
after polls closed in the December, 2016 Presidential and Parliamentary elections, brought Ghana to the brink of election
violence. Both parties’ counter-claimed victory, purportedly based on ‘results’ obtained from their polling agents posted across
the various polling stations in all the 275 constituencies. The Electoral Commission (EC), which supervised the general
election was surprisingly mute in declaring the winner of the 2016 Presidential election in the midst of these controversies.
This paper argues that the vacuum created by the EC per its delay in the declaration of certified Presidential election results
after polls had closed, was a blot on Ghana’s status as the beacon of democracy and peace in Africa.