Even as Mahama’s second term delivers stability, the NDC’s own recent primaries in Ayawaso East reveal the hollow core of our democracy - and point toward the political reckoning I have long predicted.

Before the 2024 election, I made the prediction that Mahama will win the 2024 election as the last card on the table. I, however, furthered an unpopular on: The failure of the Mahama government would not bring the NPP back to power, nor keep the NDC in office. I argued that Mahama represented the “last card” for a system bleeding trust - a final, reluctant bet on a known entity amid total disillusionment.

Today, President Mahama is well into his second term. By many measures, he is doing better: the currency has stabilized, infrastructure projects are visible, and the frantic anxiety of the Nana Addo years has eased. One could say Ghana has returned to a kind of normalcy.

But today, in the heart of Accra, the NDC’s parliamentary primary in Ayawaso East told another story - one that confirms my deeper fear: Our political system isn’t being renewed. It is decomposing from within.

Ayawaso East: Not an Anomaly, but a Autopsy:

The scenes were brazen with aspirants openly distributing cash, parcels of rice, and television sets to delegates. This wasn’t hidden or subtle; it was transactional democracy in its rawest form.

The NDC leadership issued weak condemnations, but the deed was done. The candidate with the deepest pockets won. The “election” was a purchase.

Many will dismiss this as “politics as usual.” But through the lens of Causal Holism, this is not business as usual. It is symptomatic of a system in terminal decay. Let’s trace the causes across my tiers:

(Material/Environmental): The Economics of Delegacy

Being a delegate has become a livelihood strategy in a still-struggling economy. The primary is not about ideology; it is a market day. This is a direct causal outcome of years of economic precarity. Politics has become one of the few remaining extractive industries for the grassroots.

(Psychological): The Erosion of Political Shame:

The openness of the buying signals a profound shift: the internal moral regulator that once made such acts clandestine is broken. There is no longer a psychological cost. This is the result of repeated exposure to grand corruption at the top as many perceive: Extravagance lifestyle of politicians after winning power, why should a delegate feel ashamed for taking GH¢500?

(Social-Symbolic): The Hollowing of Meaning

The NDC’s symbol, the Umbrella, once stood for social democracy, pro-poor ideals, and collective uplift. In Ayawaso East, it symbolised a franchise opportunity. When the sacred ritual of an internal election becomes a public auction, the party ceases to be a vehicle for beliefs and becomes a commercial entity. The trust Ghanaians lost in politicians? Party members have now lost it in their own.

Why Mahama’s Relative Success Is Not Enough

This is where my prediction holds its frightening shape. President Mahama may be providing competent managerial governance - fixing roads, keeping lights on, balancing books - but he is not healing the causal web of politics itself.

He is treating symptoms in Tier 1 (the economy), while Tiers 2 and 3 (political psychology and symbolic meaning) rot unchecked. The Ayawaso East primary is proof: the very party he leads is cannibalising its own future legitimacy in full public view.

And now, the ultimate twist: Mahama is not contesting again. The “last card” will be gone after 2028. What then?

Holistic Forecast: The Coming Void

The system is running on residual trust with the faint memory that “Mahama was better than Nana Addo.” But when he exits, that last thread of comparative faith snaps. What fills the void?

1.  The NDC will implode. Ayawaso East is a microcosm. Without Mahama as a unifying figure, the party will fracture into financial fiefdoms, with candidates emerging not from principle, but from purchasing power. The NDC brand will become synonymous with blatant commercial politics.

2.  The NPP will not benefit. Their brand is still toxic from the Nana Addo collapse. They offer no causal alternative, just a different set of faces attached to the same broken machinery.

3.  The Electorate will be orphaned. This is the core of my prediction: No viable political organism will command genuine allegiance. We will enter an era of protest voting, mass abstention, and chaotic volatility.

Ghanaians have lost faith not in one party but in the political species itself. Ayawaso East didn’t create this loss of faith - it validated it in real - time. If this is how our leaders are chosen, why should we believe they will ever choose for us?

Beyond Prediction: What Emerges from the Decay

I insist that when a system can no longer sustain its old form, it either collapses or gives birth to a new pattern of organisation.

The vote-buying in Ayawaso East is not the end. It is the compost, the degrading matter from which something new might grow. The questions now are:

- Will a new political vehicle emerge from outside the NDC-NPP duopoly, built on transparent, cause-based organising?

- Will citizens withdraw from national politics entirely and turn to hyper-local, issue-based movements?

- will we descend into a cynical, apathetic stasis where only the wealthy and corrupt bother to play the game?

- Or the people themselves will collapse the system to erect it anew? 

Mahama’s second term is the calm before the real storm, not an economic storm, but a political identity crisis. He would likely be the last president of Ghana’s fourth Political Republic. What comes next is unwritten.

We Are Watching the Funeral

Do not be fooled by the stability of the Flagstaff House. The primary in Ayawaso East was a live broadcast of our democracy’s nervous system failing. The patient may still be walking, but the soul has departed.

My prediction stands: the NPP cannot come back through the front door. The NDC cannot secure lasting power. And Mahama, for all his relative success, is not the cure, he is the final dose of a medicine that no longer works.

Ghana’s next political chapter will not be written by the current players. It will be written by whatever force can understand that you cannot rebuild trust with cash, and you cannot heal a nation with a hollowed-out politics.

The auction in Ayawaso East was not just a primary. It was an epitaph. It’s time we started reading it.

Havilah Bright

MPhil in Political Communication Management 

UniMAC-IJ