In a notice published in the Daily Graphic, the Electoral Commission has served notice to cancel the registration of some 17 political parties in the country.
The EC, has justified its reasons on the basis of section 15 (1) (Act 574).
According to the EC“in a bid to ensure compliance with section 22 (1) of the Political Parties Act, 2000 (Act 574), the Electoral Commission undertook a nationwide exercise to inspect the offices of all registered political parties in Ghana. This exercise was conducted from the 16 May to 9 June 2022.”
“Following the nationwide inspection, it came to light that the under-listed Political Parties have no offices at the national and regional levels as required by section 15 (1) (Act 574).”
The EC added, “The Commission intends to invoke section 15 (3) (c) of the Political Parties Act of 2000, Act 574, which mandates it to cancel the registration of political parties which do not have offices at the national and regional levels.”
The performance of the so-called smaller political parties that participated in the 2020 elections is not better than the woeful outing many of them recorded in 2016.
In the 2020 presidential election polls, all the smaller parties put together, could not up to hundred thousand votes out of a total of thirteen million, one hundred and nineteen thousand, four hundred and sixty votes (13,119,460).
The reason for this abysmal performance and one which has informed this decision of the EC is that they lack presence in most parts of the country.
It is the considered opinion of this newspaper that there should be no room for political parties that are not making impact in the polity.
Whatever the argument, although the freedom of association remains sacrosanct as enshrined in the Constitution, the need to sanitise the democratic space by weeding out ineffective and dead weight political parties cannot be overemphasised.
We believe that beyond the cancelation of these sleeping political parties, stricter registration laws should be adopted to help narrow the gap exploited by unserious people from polluting the political space with mercantile parties.
