The Executive Director of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh is concerned about the number of presidential candidates approved by the Electoral Commission (EC) for the December 7 election.
The EC has qualified a total of thirteen presidential aspirants for the upcoming election following vetting proceedings. But Professor Prempeh is worried that the many approved candidates might just be individuals pretending to be genuine contenders while being secretly affiliated to the two big political parties in the country.
His assertion is based on the fact that the country operates on a “duopolistic politcal system” where the culture of a ‘winner-takes all’ is prominent and where choices of dissatisfied voters are limmited as a result.
Professor Prempeh called the EC’s integrity into question, saying the number of approved candidates would have reduced had the EC done due diligence in their vetting process.
“We operate a duopolistic political system in a highly polarised winner-takes-all political culture and so how does exit look like in that kind of context? Exit occurs in a variety of ways. Dissatisfied voters can switch between parties but ours being duopolistic, it means that the choice is, practically speaking, there are 13 or so people on the ballot and I think if the Electoral Commission was more diligent and scrupulous, there would be fewer and one will wonder why we keep having the numbers that we have on the ballot every election year when most of these political parties do not meet the requirements. But there is folklore about why it is that way.
“It is basically because they are proxies of one of these two political parties for the purpose of influencing decision-making at the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC).”
He was speaking at the First anniversary lecture in honour of the late legal practitioner Akoto Ampaw.
In September, the EC declared 13 of 24 vetted aspirants qualified. Some of the disqualified candidates expressed disappointment at the announcement and threathened to seek legal action. People’s National Convention (PNC) flagbearer, Bernard Monah,a serial critique of the government was amongst the disqualified candidates. He resorted to legal action at a High Court where the EC’s decision turned out justified..
Source: Dehotpress
Thank you for reading from Dehotpress, a Ghanaian news website. You are welcome to share this story on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., and you can also follow us there.
Discussion about this post