Ghana’s Presidential Election 2012 – What’s so novel?

Ghana held elections this past Friday, December 7th 2012 with extended voting into Saturday, December 8th to accommodate technical problems with biometric voting. The current president, John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) who became president of Ghana in July after the unexpected death of President John Atta Mills was re-elected president with over 50% of the votes in what was described as a tight race.

I’m not even going to wax poetic on Ghanaian politics because despite the many Facebook & Twitter updates and the internet videos of the presidential debates I’m not well versed in it. I just think it’s time for the news agencies (BBC, CNN, etc) to stop focusing on the fact that Ghana has had yet another peaceful presidential election. I think we have established that we are able to hold democratic elections and choose between the two dominant parties.

However, we have not yet arrived. How about these politicians actually delivering on their promises and promulgating Ghana into it’s new media status as a politically stable, burgeoning middle-class African country?

How are we still having frequently electricity rationing otherwise known as “light-out”? How is it that there are areas, even in major cities, that don’t have good plumbing if any at all?

We are beyond surviving a political election. We can do better.