Upside Down

In an atmosphere of street fights and charges of fraud, nearly half of Ghana's 5,500,000 people last week swarmed to the polls. Their object: 1) to vote for or against a new constitution which would change Ghana from a dominion to a republic; 2) to elect as President either Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, 50, or his white-thatched rival, Dr. Joseph Danquah, 64, the present leader of the opposition United Party.

Dr. Danquah, the recognized elder statesman of Ghana politics, was campaigning for independence when Nkrumah was still an unknown student studying at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Danquah, a lawyer trained at London's Inner Temple and a sociologist with several books to his credit, brought Kwame Nkrumah back to Ghana to become organizing secretary of the nationalist movement. Nkrumah promptly displaced Danquah as the nationalist leader and, over the years, has nearly decimated the United Party, whose seats in Parliament have dwindled from 32 to 13 through the imprisonment of some legislators and the expedient switch in allegiance of others.

The election was expected to be a walkover for Nkrumah. But the first returns showed that in some areas, Ghanaians were beginning to have qualms about their self-appointed "messiah." In the capital city of Accra, two of the city's wards rejected the proposed constitution and favored Danquah over Nkrumah. Even in his home constituency, Nkrumah got only 7,000 votes compared with his 1956 total of 11,000.

But in the hinterland, which had been a stronghold of the opposition until Nkrumah ruthlessly broke the power of the tribal chiefs two years ago, the Prime Minister's machine showed its efficiency. United Party vehicles were burned; party leaders were jailed on flimsy charges until the voting was over. Nkrumah's hard-fisted Transport Minister Krobo ("Crowbar") Edusei stormed into one United Party headquarters and. when he saw the Prime Minister's picture hung upside down with pins stuck in its eyes, ordered that a beating be administered to the man responsible. In an Ashanti district toured by Edusei. Nkrumah got 22.000 votes, although the total vote of the constituency had never before topped 7,000.

At week's end these tactics gave Kwame Nkrumah and his new constitution an unbeatable 8-1 lead. Said defeated Dr. Joseph Danquah: "I am beginning to feel ashamed of the things that are being done here in the name of democracy."

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