NDC’s ORAL promises are coming back to haunt it

The National Democratic Congress swept into power on a wave of promises, among the loudest of which was that those accused of looting the public purse would face swift and certain consequences. Now, a political scientist is warning that the gap between that campaign rhetoric and the reality of due process is beginning to close in on the governing party.

Dr. Joshua Zaato, a Senior Lecturer in the Political Science Department at the University of Ghana, raised the concern on the AM Show on Thursday, following news that Operation Recover All Loot, widely known as ORAL, had successfully frozen assets worth GH¢1.5 billion. While the figure represents a significant milestone, Dr. Zaato argued that it is unlikely to satisfy a base that was primed to expect something far more dramatic.

The problem, in his assessment, is one of messaging. The NDC did not campaign on the language of investigations and legal processes. It campaigned on outcomes, and very specific ones at that.

“They told their followers that Cecilia Dapaah, when we come, she will go to jail,” he said. “They didn’t make it look like ‘when we come, we investigate.’ That’s the difference.”

It is a distinction that cuts to the heart of the tension now playing out. Prosecuting corruption is, by its very nature, a slow and procedurally demanding exercise. Evidence must be gathered, cases must be built, and the rights of the accused must be respected throughout, regardless of how certain guilt may appear to observers on the outside. But the NDC’s campaign communicators, Dr. Zaato argued, drew no such distinction for their followers. Instead, the language used on the trail gave the impression that guilt had effectively already been established, and that power was all that stood between accusation and conviction.

That expectation, he warned, was always going to be difficult to meet, and the party is now having to manage the fallout.

Dr. Zaato was careful, however, to separate his concern about rhetoric from any objection to accountability itself. His critique is not that public officials should be shielded from scrutiny, far from it.

“Any man or woman in any regime at all who has been invited by relevant agencies, his fundamental human rights protected and taken to legitimate processes, I have no problem with that,” he said.

The lesson, it seems, is one that political parties across the spectrum have been slow to learn: that promising justice and promising revenge are very different things, and that voters, particularly loyal foot soldiers, rarely forget which one they were sold.