Author: Dr. John Osae-Kwapong, Democracy and Development Fellow, CDD-Ghana, and Project Director, the Democracy Project

Partisans are often quick to caution against politicizing public problems, and I agree with them—public problems do not wear political colors. The recent floods and the devastation they brought, including the loss of precious Ghanaian lives, did not discriminate based on political affiliation.

When the rains intensified and the flooding began, it did not pause to ask whether one sympathized with the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the National Democratic Congress (NDC), any other party, or none at all. It simply wrought its devastation and left us, as a nation, to decide how we intend to confront our perennial public problems.

The devastation is heartbreaking, but it is our inability to decisively deal with this problem that continues to leave many minds, including mine, confused. Yet, even against the backdrop of the caution against politicization—and the loss of lives and property—the floods have not been spared the usual banter between voices aligned with our two main political parties, NPP and NDC.

Scoring Political Points with Public Problems

Why do we keep doing this to every single public problem that confronts us as a country? There are three key reasons why we do. The first is the incentive structure of our politics.

In a multiparty democracy with regular competitive elections like Ghana’s, political parties are interested in winning and keeping power. It is in winning elections that they can implement the ideas they believe hold the key to solving our public problems.

Competition, and battling for the hearts and minds of Ghanaians, is expected. Winning the hearts and minds of voters means a political party must be able to turn a country’s public problem into a political liability for its main rivals, especially if they are the ruling party.

The calculus for political parties, it seems to me, is how to get voters to believe that public problems exposed by an event are the doing of an incumbent government. In reality, if done well, a political party can leverage such public problems to score political points.

Second is a continuation of a cycle I often describe as ‘precedent set means precedent must be followed,’ or, in local parlance, ‘you do me, I do you.’ Our politics is such that, when in opposition, political parties do not miss any opportunity to be critical of the ruling party, often promising how better placed they are to solve the country’s public problems.

This can erode the support an incumbent party enjoys from voters. Do not misconstrue my point – a healthy democracy needs a vibrant opposition. What we see, however, is more than just vibrant opposition; it is related to the point mentioned above—leveraging public problems for political gain.

In consequence, after a turnover election and positions are switched, the new opposition (previously incumbent) recalls with very little fondness what they suffered under the new incumbent party (previously opposition). The result is paying back in equal measure, or more.

The third is how we view the successful solving of our public problems. I agree—governments must get credit for the things done well. After all, when governments fail citizens, we do not hesitate to punish them through the ballot box by voting them out of power.

So, if a particular government, through well-designed policies and programs, succeeds in solving a public problem that seemed intractable, it must be given its due recognition. Governance, however, is a continuum, and successfully solving public problems will transcend the lifespan of any incumbent political party.

Our politics, unfortunately, gives me the impression that it is too wedded to the idea that governance is a series of single events tied to the lifespan of a particular incumbent party. With such a philosophy, it is difficult to collectively own and solve our most pressing public problems.

Decoupling our politics from our public problems

Politics is also about problem-solving, so asking that we decouple politics from public problems may come across as failing to realize a key feature of any political architecture.

The decoupling I am asking for is not the political engagement among citizens or policymakers where the question is ‘who did more than whom’ and ‘who is to blame for the lack of a solution, or who should get credit for efforts made to solve the problem.’

Rather, what we should cultivate as a habit is a full accounting of the cumulative efforts, if any, to address a particular public problem, and an honest assessment of the outcomes.

It is only then that we can get a better appreciation of why problems persist, why our efforts appear to be failing, and what we must do differently going forward. Remember, the consequences of unsolved public problems do not discriminate by political color.