Special aide to former president John Dramani Mahama, Joyce Bawah Mogtari
More room for improvement in the area of women’s representation, this is the verdict of a special aide to former President John Dramani Mahama, Joyce Bawah Mogtari.
“Ghana has done well! But we must do more to ensure that women are well represented everywhere!!” she wrote on Twitter.
She had quoted a tweet from Joe Jackson, the Director of Strategy and Business Operations at Dalex Finance. Jackson was referencing a BBC report which spoke about the 50th anniversary of voting rights for Swiss women.
“The fight for gender equity is about perseverance. We have a long way to go. I found out that Ghana gave women the right to vote long before Switzerland,” he said.
After three failed attempts to govern democratically on its own, Ghana ushered in its Fourth Republican Constitution in 1993.
This was after a number of military coup d états that stretched from post-independence in March 1957 to 1981.
With Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party (CPP) government being the first casualty of a coup d état in 1966, other military juntas followed in 1972, 1978, 1979 and 1981.
The military coup d états which became a common feature of the Ghanaian political terrain also became repulsive to many Ghanaians, with many people craving for democratic rule.
But such desire could not be achieved easily as the military juntas at the time were unwilling to allow for civilian rule, denying the people’s sovereign right to elect their own leaders.