<<Print>>

Political parties and religious groups have agreed to assist the Electoral Commission (EC) in the implementation of the Constitutional Instrument CI 78 that created the 45 new constituencies. The political parties have also pledged to contest the newly created seats. The parties in concert with religious bodies, however, urged the EC to take steps to ensure that all the issues raised about the CI, particularly, regarding the possible disenfranchisement of some Ghanaians due to the omissions of some electoral areas, were corrected. This was a consensus reached at a joint meeting of political parties including the Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, the Progressive People�s Party (PPP�s) and representatives of the Ghana Conference on Religion and Peace (GCRP) which convened the meeting in Accra Tuesday. GCRP is made up of leaders of religious groups including Christians and Muslims seeking to ensure a peaceful 2012 polls. Confirming the NPP�s stance to graphic.com.gh after the meeting, Mr Obestebi-Lamptey, said the party would contest all the new seats and reiterated its earlier position that it had never been against the creation of the 45 constituencies. He said the NPP was concerned about the timing and asked �how can the EC introduce such major changes like the creation of 45 constituencies less than months to a general election�. He added that the party�s other concern now was how the EC would ensure that not a single registered Ghanaian voter was disenfranchised, a problem, he contended, had come about because of the �shoddy work� of the EC. �The EC had gone ahead and created the 45 new constituencies, now we are struggling to ensure that nobody losses his or her right to vote in any constituency because of the shoddy way in which the EC conducted the creation ,� he added. Although there was no representative of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at the meeting, Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development who represented the NDC in last week�s meeting, told graphic.com.gh in a telephone interview that the party was in support of the agreement reached. Leading members of the NPP, NDC and the PPP, religious leaders and officials of the EC at a meeting on November 24, 2012 agreed that the creation of the 45 constituencies was legal, proper and irreversible but deferred consensus on whether or not the constituencies should be used for the December 7, 2012 general election, to last Tuesday GCRP is made up of leaders of religious groups including Christians and Muslims seeking to ensure peaceful 2012 polls. Last Monday, Parliament by a majority vote (81) as against 56, rejected the report of the committee on Subsidiary Legislation of the House which identified several anomalies in the CI presented to the House some weeks earlier. Majority of members of the Committee had called for the annulment of CI 78 because it excluded 26 electoral areas created under the Local Government (Creation of New District Electoral Areas and Designation of Units Instrument, 2010 (LI 1983). Prior to the debate, the NPP on several platforms, had urged the EC not to create the 45 new constituencies due to the limited time prior to the elections and some other discrepancies in the CI. Briefing the media just after the close door meeting Tuesday, the Co-Convenor of the meeting, the Most Rev Bishop Joseph Osei-Bonsu, stated that all the political parties had agreed to contest the 45 new constituencies for the sake of rule of law. Others, he said, were concerned about the possible mistakes inherent in the CI which could make it impossible for some electorate to exercise their franchise and called on the EC to ensure that the problem were addressed.