Ghana Supreme Court To Be Fair

Ghanaians  has called on Supreme Court judges adjudicating the election petition to be fair and thorough in their examination of the facts, being presented before them by parties in the case.
Even though 24 million populations in Ghana are confident in the independence and credibility of the court, they believes a fair and thorough examination of all facts will lead to an impartial adjudication of the competing claims before the court.

A commodities boom, abundant foreign currency reserves, a democratically elected government and a new generation of educated young people endowed with huge potential. Sounds familiar? I am actually describing the Ghana of 1957.

It is perhaps hard for young people today to imagine how optimistic my generation was at the time of independence. Ours was one of the richest countries in Africa.

Like today, our raw materials were in high demand. Our national income was comparable to South Korea’s and our prospects were among the best in what was then called the “under-developed world.”

Yet, 30 years later, South Korea's annual income per head had risen to 10 times that of Ghana’s. It eventually joined the club of rich nations while we hope to become a “middle-income” country only by 2015. Our early hopes were dashed by exclusionary politics, poor economic management and corruption, which created and perpetuated political instability.

Since then, we have steadily regained lost economic ground and become a stable democracy, organizing a series of credible elections, leading to peaceful transfers of power. We can be proud of these achievements. Once again, Ghana’s youth is full of hope in the future. 

With oil coming on stream, and strong exports of other commodities, our economy is growing at a vigorous eight per cent and we have a second chance to raise Ghana into the world’s premier league within a generation.

But for this upbeat scenario to come true this time, we must not score own-goals”. We have to invest the revenues from our natural resources and agriculture into health, education and infrastructure for the benefit of all Ghanaians. We must make the most of our second chance, for we do not know whether there will be a third.

It is against this backdrop that Ghana awaits the momentous ruling of the Supreme Court on last December’s presidential election. The court has already won plaudits for its rigorous and professional work over the past months. The very uncertainty of the outcome speaks to the independence and credibility of the court.

What matters most is that its ruling be based on a thorough and fair examination of all the facts, leading to an impartial adjudication of the competing claims before the court.

The ball will soon be back in the politicians’ court. The successful party must overcome the temptation to gloat, and the other side must avoid the urge to cast doubt on the court and its decision. Succumbing to either impulse would be reckless and unworthy of responsible democratic leaders, and indeed of the people of Ghana, whose prospects depend on continued political stability. 

I am confident that the election dispute can be resolved peacefully through our institutions - provided the main parties respect the findings of the Court. Such an outcome will not only burnish our democratic credentials, but also bolster the hopes of a nation for a brighter, more prosperous tomorrow. 

As the chairman of the African Union panel that mediated a settlement to the post-election violence in 2007/2008, I was impressed by how responsibly Kenyans handled the uncertainties that came out of their last elections in March. The political parties were at pains to discourage violence by their supporters. 

Elections are a means of regulating political rivalries in the broader interest of the nation. As the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security highlighted in its 2012 report, the importance of elections with integrity lies in the legitimacy they confer on the winners and the security they ensure for the losers. Democracy is not about winner-takes-all politics; it is about the winner serving all his or her people and shoring up the rule of law.

The winner has to be given a chance to lead, and the losers have to find their rightful place in opposition, keeping the government in check and preparing rival policies to present to the electorate the next time round. 

In 1957, Kwame Nkrumah said, “We are prepared to pick it (Ghana) up and make it a nation that will be respected by every nation in the world.” Let us live up to Kwame Nkrumah’s aspirations today and show the world what we are capable of.

High Abortion Rates

Findings of a newly released study that in Ghana, a woman’s socio-economic status largely determines how safe her termination of an unwanted pregnancy will be.The study, 

“Factors Associated with Abortion-Seeking and Obtaining a Safe Abortion in Ghana,” by Aparna Sundaram et al of the Guttmarcher Institute based in the United State, (US), founds that while middle and upper-income women in urban areas were more likely than other women to obtain a safe abortion, women who were young, poor or without support of a partner were at a greater risk of having an unsafe abortion and experiencing injury or death.

The researchers, who analyzed data from the 2007 Ghana Maternal Health Survey, found that wealthier women were three times more likely to have a safe procedure than poorer women. They also found that women who had financial support from their partners were more likely to have safe procedure. ”A majority of women whose partners paid for some or all of the expenses had a safe abortion, while only few of women whose partners did not contribute did so.” Presenting the research findings at a disseminating workshop attended by players in the area of reproductive health in Accra, Aparna Sundaram, lead author of the study, said age was also associated with a woman’s ability to obtain a safe procedure. “Adolescents were especially vulnerable to having unsafe abortions. Teens were 77 per cent less likely to have a safe procedure than woman in their 30s and 60 per cent less likely to do so than women in their 20s.The researchers attributed this disparity to adolescents having less knowledge about where to obtain safe legal abortion, poorer access to financial resources and being more concerned about stigma and, thus, likely to ask for help. Previous studies have documented that even when safe legal options are available, the stigma associated with abortion is so powerful that it often leads women to seek an unsafe, clandestine abortion. “Our analysis makes clear that there is an urgent need to develop and enforce policies and programmes to lower unintended pregnancy rates and improve access to contraception and safe abortion services, especially among economically and socially disadvantaged women,” said Aparna Sundaram.

The researchers noted other important factors that led women to obtain unsafe procedures, such as a limited number of qualified abortion providers and the lack of awareness of Ghana’s fairly liberal abortion law. They stressed that in order to reduce the incidence of unsafe abortion and its harmful consequences, efforts must be made to destigmatise the procedure and educate women and the general population about the legal status of abortion in Ghana.

A reproductive health expert working with the Guttmarcher Institute in Ghana, Dr. Joana Nerquaye-Tetteh, said often, access to quality health services was determined by circumstances rather than need, with the less well-off experiencing the worse outcomes. “The tragic reality is that many women continue to put their health and live at risk to terminate a pregnancy, going to untrained providers or worse, attempting to self-induce. The resulting harm would be avoided if existing guidelines were actually implemented,” she added.

The Country Director of Ipas, an international organization which promotes the health of women, Dr. Koma Jehu-Appiah, who moderated the workshop, reiterated that unsafe abortion remained a leading cause of maternal death and injury in Ghana. He said to reverse this trend there was need for the collaboration of stakeholders including young people, women’s groups, religious groups and service providers. Discussions that followed the presentation of the research findings referred to actions that can be taken by the country to reduce death and injury as a result of unsafe abortion. On the subject of how to reduce unsafe abortion among young people, the workshop participants proposed the development of appropriate Information, Education and Communication (IEC)/ Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) messages for targeted youth populations, including in and out of school youth, rural youth and young people in poor communities. Young people, they further said, should be assisted to develop decision-making skills and empowered to make informed sexual and reproductive health decisions, while they were also provided youth-friendly services delivery at all levels. The participants further proposed that women should be reached with information on safe abortion and the Ghana Health Service standards and protocols be fully implemented to generally expand facilities and ensure access to service delivery. In addition, they said, subsidized and sometimes free services should be offered for the less economically empowered women.

The role of religious bodies in preventing needless deaths of women through unsafe abortion also came up for discussion.

Participants proposed improved collaboration between religious bodies and community development practitioners on important health issues including safe abortion.