Dean of the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) Law School, Professor Kofi Abotsi has urged Ghanaians to elect a president who can demonstrate humility and also admit his policy failures.
He explained that admitting one’s policy failures simply means earning lessons and correcting them. Therefore it is important for Ghana to get a president who recognises his shortcomings.
“As the campaigns heat up, the two leading candidates continue to defend their records! But are there failures to be acknowledged? It’s called ‘learning’—-Lessons learned. For candidates who can better demonstrate humility & policy repentance should in my view be better electable,” he wrote on his X platform.
Earlier, Prof Kofi Abotsi called for a second look at the winner-takes-all regime in Ghana. He explained that the winner-takes-all system increases the cost of electoral defeats, a situation that threatens the entire country.
The Winner-Takes-All system of politics is one in which all the candidates who do not emerge victorious in an election receive no authorized role in the politico system of the country, irrespective of the number of votes they obtained in the election and the voices of the citizens they represent.
In a post on his X platform, he said “The cycle & psyche of ‘winner takes all’ increases the cost of electoral loss! It is the reason elections present deathly choices for candidates & followers.
“That threatens us all, and is the reason for a serious rethink of governance, nation-building & elections.”
He further stated that the huge powers vested in the president show that the framers of the 1992 constitution contemplated a ‘philosopher king-wise, knowledgeable, altruistic, competent’.
“For the fractious, acrimonious, and self-seeking people we have been, this has proven to be a tragic miscalculation.”
In the area of voting in an election, he sated that identity-based voting is the reason for political non-performance.
“Where parties know that their support is grounded in ethnicity, strongholds and unflinching voter loyalty, they have zero incentive to perform. Voters cannot support poor performance while complaining about it.”
