The Executive Director of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh, has criticised the Electoral Commission (EC) for approving 13 candidates to contest the presidential election on December 7, 2024.
He questioned the credibility and integrity of the processes through which the EC approved the 13 candidates for the presidential election.
Speaking at a lecture commemorating the late private legal practitioner Akoto Ampaw, he asserted that some of the candidates who were approved to contest may not be entirely genuine contenders but proxies of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC).
In his opinion, if the EC had been more diligent, the number of candidates approved to run would have been lower than the 13 on the ballot.
“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).”
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
