Wednesday 6th December 2000
Landmark election in Ghana as citizens vote to replace President Jerry Rawlings
Thursday will prove a landmark day in the history of Ghana, as the country's citizens vote for a new president to replace Jerry Rawlings.
For 20 years he has been the leader of a nation that has courted the developed world's financial institutions and followed the advice of the economists from the IMF and World Bank.
As an air force officer he seized power with a group of revolutionaries in 1979, who then executed the previous military rulers. He later adopted democracy winning elections in 1992 and 1996 and after Thursday's election he will voluntarily retire.
There is no doubt that Jerry Rawlings has had a tremendous influence over the development of Ghana's economy.
Professor Carol Lancaster is an expert in African politics and development at Georgetown University in the United States. She has followed Mr Rawlings career since she first met him many years ago when she worked for the US Government.
She told our reporter Russell Padmore that she sensed from that occasion that he was a man who was often very engaged, very energetic, very restless and very direct in ways that were unusual for African politicians - or politicians anywhere.
"He is a very unusual man because of his background. His father was a Scottish army person and his mother Ghanaian. He was never a particularly good fit in Ghana."
He had a very good sense of what was just and what was unjust - a righteous man some people have called him and he came to power after a long and troubled economic and political experience in Ghana where there had been a huge amount of corruption.
"He actually arrested, tried and shot one or more of the previous governments politicians which had never been done before and that certainly caught peoples attention."
He stayed a year or two and then withdrew from politics - handing over to an elected government which turned out to be not very competent. He came back in 1981 to the satisfaction of many people, particularly young people who saw him as sort of an aggressive charismatic young guy who could make some difference in a country that was sinking.
And he did make a difference. After some hesitation and looking for ways to avoid implementing much needed reforms in Ghana, he and his government managed to do so.
| "The key reforms that Jerry Rawlings got through included the devaluation of the cede, despite people seeing its value as being symbolic of Ghanaian national pride." | |
After the cede was devalued and the currency was adjusted to a market rate, people got over it and were more relaxed. But he then followed that with many other fiscal reforms which have not always been maintained.
There is still a lot to be done and there is a real challenge to maintain what has already been done but, he went probably as far as any of the African governments have gone in trying to create a new and more prosperous economy and to a considerable extent he succeeded.
| "You cannot pick any one reform - it was really the package of reforms that really made a difference in Ghana." | |
His replacement will face some tough challenges to continue reforming the country's economy. Razia Khan follows the fortunes of Africa's economies for Standard Chartered Bank in London:
"As the first country in Africa to implement structural reforms, Ghana was in a fortunate position and, as such, it had very good relations with foreign donors."
That increased optimism but what was really needed, was greater privatisation, liberalisation in terms of the exchange rate to more accurately reflect the pressures which do exist and liberalisation within the economy generally.
The agriculture sector, and particularly cocoa, was going to be a challenge to any incoming government.
| "When the EU ruled that chocolate manufacturers could use vegetable fats and not cocoa, that cut demand and the price of cocoa fell." | |
There have been moves by Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Nigeria to form a cocoa cartel, but nothing is really expected to come of that.
As things stand, the only hope that Ghana has is further diversification in terms of agriculture and greater value-added office exports.
This could be a very exciting time for Ghana once an economic recovery programme is underway. The best way the country could achieve that, was to accelerate its sell-off of state-owned assets - the majority of which are expected to be sold on the local Ghana stock exchange.
Foreigners have, in the past, looked very carefully at Ghana. In 1998 it was one of the world's best performing stock exchanges and there are hopes that this could happen again in the future.
| "In 1998 Ghana was one of the world's best performing stock exchanges and there are hopes that this could happen again in the future." | |
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