By: Nate Wilson

The other day, my coworker and I attended a conference at the Center for Democratic Development (CDD), where Dr. Edem Selormey presented the findings of the ninth Afroborometer survey, which gauges public opinion on the state of democracy in Ghana, among other things. The event started late, as is the norm with these types of things, but when things finally got rolling the room was packed—I could tell that whatever was about to be said was important and would provide guidance for many. Unfortunately, most of the 45-minute-long presentation consisted of disheartening statistic after disheartening statistic.

To provide a little context, the survey, which was conducted between April 4th and April 20th of this year, randomly sampled and interviewed 2,400 participants that generally reflected the demographics of Ghana in terms of region, age, religion, and gender. While the survey found that most Ghanaians are committed to democracy and the pursuit of democratic norms, most are also extremely dissatisfied with the state of democracy in Ghana and have a negative perception of government in general. 

For instance, the survey found that views of Ghana as “a full democracy” or “a democracy with minor problems” have declined by 21 percentage points since 2017, while satisfaction with how democracy works has decreased by 29 points. Furthermore, 71% of respondents disapproved of how a member of Parliament performed their job over the past 12 months and 70% of respondents also disapproved of the performance of the President over the same time span. The negative ratings of the President have increased by 31% between 2019 and 2022. The survey findings also indicated that Ghanaians believe that corruption was running rampant. More than three-fourths (77%) of Ghanaians say the level of corruption in the country increased “somewhat” or “a lot” over the past year, a 24-percentage-point jump compared to 2019.

In spite of this relatively damming account of how the general public views the Ghanaian political system, my coworker wanted me to put a positive spin on the CDD conference. He suggested focusing on how Ghanaians fervently support the idea of democracy and what it stands for—ignoring all of the negative findings that followed. At first, I was taken aback. Then, I remembered that the newspaper I work for, The Finder, is privately owned by an individual who is deeply embedded in the NPP, the currently ruling political party. What this means is that The Finder cannot release stories that are too critical of the current government or create too much bad press. Nevertheless, I argued with my coworker for several minutes and, because I was taking the lead on this story, he let me write it my way. That being said, I still had to hold my tongue at many points, and I definitely could’ve been far more condemning, especially of the President who my coworker didn’t even want to include in the story. I’ll be interested to see how much of my final draft remains the same, and how much is changed by my editor. 

This is one of the first times where I’ve deliberately changed what I’ve written for The Finder because of political interests, and, in all honesty, it made me a bit uncomfortable. I know that it’s practically impossible to separate politics from the press, even in the United States, but the very deliberate nature of this entire situation shocked me a little. It makes me wonder how effective print media in Ghana is as the supposed fourth branch of government and as a watchdog of society.