Can the African world rely on western-style democracy to be the voice of the people for true democratic reforms, free and fair elections? While observing the elections in Ghana, a stable country, I noticed that there were few problems, compared to the ones in America in the recent presidential elections.

I also observed the enormous amounts of resources that were spent on campaigning; posters, buses, radio and TV advertisements, travel, rallies, billboards, T-shirts, caps, buttons, trucks, giving out free food, etc. I thought about how many hospitals could have been built; how many businesses could have been started, how many low-cost houses could have been built; how many hospital bills could have been paid?

And when you look at an array of so many candidates running for one office and the resources that are spent to make that happen, and it will not diminish; it will only increase as time goes on. Is this the way for Africa?

I do not want anyone to think that we need a dictatorship or one-party system with a dictator that stays in power for 30 years. But we need an alternative to the western systems imposed on us by the Europeans and the Americans.

Their systems that we have adopted inside all of Africa have basically been miserable failures in most countries all over Africa. Is this the way to go for the future of Africa? Or should we look for a system of government that is, yes, a democratic one but more conductive to our environment, our culture and our terrain?

What is so bad is that the candidates begin to attack each other personally and even attack the program of one candidate over another. This becomes very vicious. How do you explain to a young child who is at the tender age of 14 and hears that the candidate is corrupt, he stole money, he did this? How do you explain to a child who is trying to understand that this person is aspiring to head a government and you just called him a thief? Dirty politics is a way of the western world but it doesn�t have to be the way of the African.

As a Muslim, I would like to call on a verse from the Holy Qu�ran that talks about those who follow Satan; every step leads them to hell. I will say that following the westernized system of democracy, trying to use the American or British system to govern African countries and societies in the long run will lead us straight to hell. And you can see some of the results in Africa, even today.

If we condemn the western system, then we are obligated to come up with a system that speaks more directly to the needs of the African people. The democratic system that is used in America sent a message to us that the country that is known as the leader of democracy in the world has its own problems, corruption, vote-counting fraud, and this was revealed to the whole world.

They went back into the history of this democratic system coming from America and showed all of the discrepancies and inconsistencies in the electoral process. If there is to be a democratic form of government, in the African nations in particular, then there should be some control about how much money is spent on campaigning, because it stands to reason that those who have the most money can reach the most people. In the areas where people are poor and have no money, or food, it will be very easy to use the power of money to buy votes.

This is how it happens and will happen again, and you will end up with those who have money climbing to the highest offices in the country. So leadership can never come from the masses of people who have a particular need and would like to see someone address these needs in the position of power. It would always come from the rich and powerful.

And if the individual from the masses doesn�t have money, then the rich and powerful who put the money behind him will also, in the end, control the individual. So instead of he/she representing the masses of the people, that leader ends up representing a class of people, the money people. We need to analyze, we need to consult, we need to look at a form of government that makes leaders responsible. And at the same time, answer the needs of the masses and not the classes who have the money to put an image on television more times than the other candidates, who can buy more billboards, who can give out more T-shirts, who can hold more meetings, who can give the constituency flags, who can bus the people to their areas to cast their votes from their village. All of these are ingredients that do not speak well of Africa in her taking on the western-style of democracy. African traditional leaders with tremendous amounts of knowledge and skill that have been accumulated for centuries should be brought to bear to produce a system of government that speaks directly to the needs of the African people.