Ghana: Soft Control of the Press: A Dubious Normalcy

January is harmattan season in Accra, Ghana. Yellow dust billows off the Sahara, but this year from the east, the failed Kenyan elections blew their own hot storm. Ghana, fifty years independent and proud, confidently embraced democracy fifteen years ago. Now President John Kufuor, who chairs the African Union Assembly, was called to Nairobi to shore up democracy there. The Ghanaian media smile on every international display of the nation's leadership capacity, as if the rise of Kofi Annan had sealed the matter for all time, but as Kufuor headed to Kenya, the local press debated a question that seems inevitable in this breathless age: "Could a Kenya happen here?"