National Liberation Council
The National Liberation Council regime won support from powerful groups in Ghanaian society: local chiefs, intelligentsia, and business leaders, as well as the expanding military and police forces.
Elections held on 29 August 1969 thus inaugurated a new government led by the NLC's chosen successor: the Progress Party of Kofi Abrefa Busia.
[1][2] Francis Kwashie, part of the core planning group for the takeover, later commented that he and his comrades lacked "the faintest idea" of how to proceed upon gaining power.
[5] The decision to form a ruling council was made on the morning of the coup, at a meeting which included Harlley, Kokota, and Ankrah (but excluded a number of the original group) as well as Emmanuel Noi Omaboe, head of the Central Bureau of Statistics, Supreme Court Justice Fred Kwasi Apaloo, Director of Public Prosecutions Austin N. E. Amissah, and security officer D. S.
The Economic Committee, in particular, was composed of high-ranking members of the pre-existing civil service and played the lead role in creating the policies of the new government.
[12] Next, the Council declared its intention to restore civilian government "as soon as possible" and its plan for separation of powers between executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
[26] Under new leadership, groups like the Trades Union Congress and the Ghana Young Pioneers (shortly before they were disbanded) celebrated the coup and renounced Nkrumaist socialism.
[30] Rule by the National Liberation Council was sustained by strong support from the intelligentsia, in the civil service and at university, as well as by the military and police forces themselves.
A few thousand tons of surplus wheat or rice, given now when the new regimes are quite uncertain as to their future relations with us, could have a psychological significance out of all proportion to the cost of the gesture.
[38] One declaration in March 1966 exempted members of the military from paying taxes, restored their pension plan, and entitled them to various public amenities.
[42] The military borrowed techniques from the British to upgrade the social status of the armed forces; for example, they used publicity in magazines to create an image of the soldier as a powerful, humane, elite member of society.
[66] Many of these groups, including religious, legal, and economic organizations established before the CPP, had opposed the one-party system and found they could work effectively with the military government.
[69] To the dismay of tenant farmers, the NLC granted the chiefs' collective request for more favorable economic policies such as an end to the cap on land rent.
[70] In November 1968 the government established a Constituent Assembly, which contained representatives from 91 organizations such as the House of Chiefs, the Ghana Midwives' Association, and the National Catholic Secretariat.
The "Prohibition of Rumour Decree" issued in October 1966 authorized 28 days of detention and up to three years in prison for journalists who might "cause alarm and despondency", "disturb the public peace", or "cause disaffection against the N.L.C.
"[76] Criticism of the 1967 arrangement between the American firm Abbott Laboratories with the State Pharmaceutical Corporation led the NLC to fire four editors from the nation's three leading newspapers.
Under IMF influence, the government cut spending, limited wage increases, and allowed foreign companies to conduct businesses operations on their own terms.
[80] The overall result was a shift away from the CPP's efforts at national industrialization, towards resource extraction and limited manufacturing for short-term profits—most of which were gleaned by foreign companies and elites within government including the military.
The organization of this committee predated the formation of the National Liberation Council itself, and Omaboe was involved in the planning meeting to create the NLC on February 24, 1966.
[84] Control over large production sectors was granted to foreign multinational corporations such as Norway Cement Export and Abbott Laboratories.
[85] These ventures held extremely low risk for the foreign companies, since they relied on capital already within Ghana, enjoyed various economic privileges, and had outside backing to prevent expropriation.
The rationale for this policy was that if other countries could buy Ghanaian goods at lower prices, exports would increase, and conversely imports would decrease.
[88] A plan to stockpile cocoa (the top export at the time) in order to take improve Ghana's position in the world market, was canceled; the nearly-built silos, intended to accomplish this goal, allowed to fall into disrepair.
[94] The new regime made some initial concessions to workers, such as an increase in the threshold of taxable income, and a decrease in taxes (and thus prices) of some basic goods.
A. Bentum (the chief civilian collaborator in the 1966 coup), made efforts to prevent these strikes from happening, and was therefore widely distrusted by workers.
He occupied himself with reading, writing, and political discussion; he reportedly sometimes listened to vinyl recordings of Black Americans activists like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael.
[104] His ideology became more overtly communist, and in 1969 he wrote, in Class Struggle in Africa, that Pan-African socialism would "advance the triumph of the international socialist revolution, and the onward progress towards world communism, under which, every society is ordered on the principle of from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
[21] Plans were made to transfer the government to civilian rule, headed by K. A. Busia, the leader of a former opposition party outlawed by Nkrumah.
[113] Ankrah, the Head of State, was forced to resign on April 2, 1969, amidst accusations that he was planning to form a political party and run for president.
[117] Members of the two groups voted markedly along these lines, but in the nationwide results Busia and the Progress Party won the sizeable majority of seats: 105 of 140.
