Assembly Elections in Danger

Reports indicate that the 2010 District Assembly Elections scheduled for October this year could hit a snag if current flaws in the new Local Government Act are not rectified.

The new electoral reforms – Legislative Instrument (LI) 1967 that the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development sent to Parliament for amendment in June 2010 was fraught with several inconsistencies.

Sources close to the Electoral Commission (EC) disclosed that the LI seeks to reduce the number of unit committee members in the districts from 15,000 to 5,000.

This means that the number of electoral areas will be coterminous with that of the number of unit committee members.

The paper learnt that this cannot be applied in all the districts during the election because there must be a legislation that would ensure the expansion of the district assemblies to meet the proposed reforms.

The election, the paper’s sorties established, could only come off, if those flaws or anomalies are rectified by Parliament, which is currently on recess.

However, when the paper reached Mr. Albert Kofi Arhin, the Director of Elections at the EC, he declined to speak on the matter except to say “for any clarification you can contact our public relations outfit.”

As directed by Mr. Arhin, the paper caught up with the Public Relations Officer of the EC, Mr. Owusu Parry.

“…We are not aware of any flaws in the LI but if you have critically examined the LI 1967 and realised that there are some errors, please contact the Ministry of Local Government for the necessary reaction because it is the ministry that introduced it,” suggested Mr. Parry.

A deep throat source at the EC told Today that “Most newly created districts, like Adentan, in the Greater Accra Region, which has 4 electoral areas, is not enough to constitute a district assembly under the LI.

This is the main challenge hindering the EC from undertaking public educational campaigns on the district assembly election. Apart from these weaknesses in the said LI 1967, there are other issues that require certificate of emergency by Parliament. This, the paper discovered, is why the EC is delaying the processes,” the source said.

The source further explained “by law the mandate of the current assembly members ends in August; beyond August, assembly members do not have the mandate of their electorate.

Meanwhile, officials of EC and Ministry of Local Government are tight lipped over who should call Parliament to reconvene.”
It would be recalled that the EC recently conducted a limited voter’s registration exercise and followed it up with the exhibition of the voter’s register which was witnessed low patronage.

Today can report that the next process is filing of names and details of candidates, but in view of these challenges, the process would not go any longer.