Let us reduce campaign period – Crabbe

Political parties and the Electoral Commission must come to an agreement for political party campaigns to be held within a limited period during election years, VCRAC Crabbe, a former Supreme Court justice, has urged.

According to Mr Crabbe, the long electioneering period often comes at a huge cost to political parties and an agreement between election stakeholders can address that.

“The manner in which we do elections, we need to reduce the period of the election campaign. It adds to the cost and it’d be nice if we can have some regime not necessarily by law but sometimes some of these things can be done if we have an understanding between ourselves. The political parties can come to an understanding for certain things to be done,” he stated.

The co-chair of the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) explained that though the constitution stipulates that the election for a new president may be held within four months to the end of tenure while the poll for legislators should be held 30 days before the dissolution of parliament, parties and the EC have been able to come to an agreement for both elections to be held on the same day since 1996.

Thus, in his view, it would not be out of place for an understanding to be reached on the duration of the campaign period in an election year.

“So there are quite a lot of things which we can agree to do for the benefit of the country. That we can come to an agreement that let’s have a year or six-month period within which we do campaign,” he added.

Currently, there is no defined period within which parties may commence campaign in an election year. Ghana’s electoral laws, however, mandate parties to cease campaigning at least 24 hours before start of polls.