Minority political parties dying slowly - GNA survey reveals

Accra, June 8, GNA - Eighteen months after the last general elections in Ghana (Election 2008) the vitality of minority political parties, including their contribution to national development is rapidly waning, a Ghana News Agency (GNA) survey revealed in Accra on Tuesday.

excluding the New Patriotic Party (NPP), revealed their inactivity. such as office stationery, disconnected telephone lines, and vehicles to operate.

The dormant parties include Convention People's Party (CPP), Peoples National Convention (PNC), Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), New Vision Party (NVP), Democratic Peoples' Party (DPP), and Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP).

"we are in electoral off-period".

Most of the party officials the GNA spoke to said the parties were broke, but that they could not come out openly to say this for the public to ridicule their party.

They contended that because they lost the previous elections their financiers had also deserted them.

"Our presidential candidates have also deserted us; they have adopted subtle means of avoiding us.they sneak in and out of the offices.it is hard to be in opposition", said one party official who declined to give his name. Some of the Constituency Executives told the GNA since the last elections, none of the national executives had ever visited them, whereas the NDC and NPP National and Regional Executives were always in constant touch with their people.

An Electoral Administrator told GNA that the posture of the political parties was an affront to constitutional provisions and the Political Parties Law (Act 574) which mandated the parties to maintain functional national, regional, district and constituency offices.

The political parties were also mandated to participate in shaping the political will of the people, disseminate information on political issues, and undertake social and economic programmes of a national character, which most of the parties have woefully failed to live up to.

The Act mandates the Electoral Commission (EC) to cancel the registration certificate of a political party on the grounds that it has refused, neglected or failed to establish or maintain functional national, regional, constituency and district offices.