Four Parties To Be Barred From Elections 2004

At least four political parties risk being barred from participating in this years general election for failing to comply with the country’s electoral laws.

The affected parties failed to satisfy Electoral Commission inspectors who were deployed to ascertain their representation at the national, regional and district levels.

The parties that could be affected are Wereko-Brobbey’s United Ghana Movement, National Reform Party, Dan Lartey’s Great Consolidated Popular Party, Ghana Democratic Republican Party and the EGLE Party.

The exercise, which was carried out in December last year, was to find out if they were politically active in two-thirds of the country as required by law. But the Electoral Commission’s Chief Director, Damoah Agyeman told JOY News that of the 10 registered political parties only four, including the NPP, NDC, PNC and CPP are functional countrywide.

Copies of the preliminary report have been given to representatives of the various parties to study and give feedback to the Commission, which is due to take action on defaulters. Mr. Damoah Agyeman says the commission’s decision will also take into account the parties’ rendition of annual audited accounts.

Similar constitutional breaches by the parties went unpunished in previous election years. But the Electoral Commission has now decided to take a number of tough measures including the exclusion of the defaulting parties from this year’s elections.

"For now, I cannot say much for what the commission since we are yet to decide but in the past we've always allowed the parties to get away with those breaches. It has been the company's policy to try and nurture democracy but we might get tough on the parties this time", Damoah Agyeman said.

Individual party members with ambitions to hold political offices are unlikely to be affected by any action the commission takes as they could run as independent candidates.

''The parties could be proscribed but the individuals can contest as independent. The parties would no more be there''.

The political parties however have vowed to fight on for a right to contest this year’s elections. Dan Lartey, leader of the Great Consolidated Popular Party told JoyFM that the electoral commission was giving the parties a raw deal.

''We meet the requirements of political parties'', he said. ''The law says that a political party must be registered which we have done. We had to show the electoral commission our offices across the country and we did that. The law also says we must have a certain number of founding members which we provided. So I simply don’t understand why the electoral commission is back asking us all sorts of questions.''