The document discusses challenges with budgets and governance in Ghana. It notes that the real budget is hidden from civil society and local governments do not have real power as constitutional relationships favor chieftaincy. Participatory budgeting is difficult but models from everyday Ghanaians could be built upon. Parliament rejected the government's broad financial policy, causing a political dispute, as they wanted to focus on members' personal interests over national interests. The essay also discusses how a civil society organization, despite initial rejection, became accepted by the government and security institutions as a partner in security sector reform.

1. A Moree View of the National Budget Amos Anyimadu [email_address] www.AfricaTalks.org

2. The Budget in Ghana is not the budget. The real budget is unintentionally and unnecessarily hidden. Civil Society is an opaque and difficult idea. Civil Society must become, as it were, an individual person if it is to become more relevant to wealth creation and citizen construction in Ghana.

3. Local Government in Ghana is not local government. Real local government occurs on the blind side of our prescribed constitutional relationships with particular regard to the worrying depreciation of chieftaincy. Participatory budgeting in any context is a very tall order but the answer may be blowing in the wind. Real technologies of cooperation and lines of accountability are already at work in the everyday living of many Ghanaians which can be built up to the exacting standards of participatory budgeting.

6. In strict legal terms this was of no consequence because the constitution did not empower Parliament to pass the Government's broad financial policy as such but rather specific Bills which could empower the government to impose new taxes and make new expenditure. However, this rejection was of great political significance: certain members of Parliament called on the government to resign!

7. The President took a serious view of this development because according to him it adversely affected the Government's negotiations with certain international bodies, he charged Parliament "to be serious and refrain from holding up Budgets for the private business of particular members". The Minister of Transport aand Communications accused Parliamentarians of "being concerned with their personal instead of antional interest". This ws because although he had presented a document on the importation of 800 Tata buses to Parliament for ratification it had taken a whole year to go through the Committee stage alone. Source: Amos Anyimadu, "The Executive Presidency and the Westminster Tradition in Ghana", Long Essay, Department of Political Science, University of Ghana, 1982.

8. Our own experience at the African Security Dialogue and Research (ASDR) shows what is possible in terms of CSO participation in SSR. When we tried to register ASDR as an NGO in early 1998 (under the name of DEPRAC4) our application was summarily rejected on the grounds that an NGO had no business dabbling in security or defence matters.5 Yet in a little over two or three years our organisation had come to be accepted by government, the parliament, and the security institutions as a legitimate partner and focus of work on security and defence transformation.

9. We received our first big break in 2000 (our first full year of operation) when we obtained support from DFID and the South African High Commission in Ghana for a Ghana-South Africa ‘Roundtable on Security Sector Reform and Democratisation’ in Accra in June 2000. Even though the (Rawlings) regime was considered ‘closed’ on security issues, the Minister for Defence at the time (who coincidentally had attended the DFID conference on Military Expenditure in London in February 2000) was supportive, and his ministry agreed to co-sponsor the event with the ASDR (the first time this had ever happened). Source: Eboe Hutchful , " A Civil Society Perspective" in Providing Security for People: Security Sector Reform in Africa, Edited by Anicia Lalá & Ann M Fitz-Gerald, 2003