Political parties are the most unregulated political institutions in Ghana – Professor Gyampo

Professor Ransford Gyampo, a political science lecturer at the University of Ghana has accused the Electoral Commission of abandoning a core duty of regulating the activities of political parties.

Professor Gyampo said on Net2 TV that political parties have a field day breaching the rules that govern their operations because the Electoral Commission has over the years shown little or no interest in regulating their activities.

He decried that successive Electoral Commission administrations have limited their duties to organizing elections and completely neglected their power to control the actions of political parties.

Citing one of such laws, Professor Gyampo said the Electoral Commission has failed to ensure that parties properly adhered to the rule that ties their existence to them being present in most parts of the country.

“Our constitution empowers the Electoral Commission to compile voters register and also organize elections. Another power is the regulation of political parties so that they fulfil their constitutional mandate. Unfortunately, our EC since 1992 appears to be more interested in the elections and have forgotten about regulating the political parties. So political parties now are the most unregulated political institutions in Ghana.”

“Nobody is regulating them so they do whatever they want. The law says political parties must have branches in two-thirds of the country. Do they have it or not? What I’ve seen is that once a party hears that EC is about to inspect their offices, they rent lotto kiosks or stores and brand it with their party colours,” he said as he gave his expert view on how Ghana builds on its democratic success.

Gyampo was, however, full of praise for the current Electoral Commission over how it organized the 2020 elections.

He intimated that the 2020 election is one of the most successful elections in the country’s history.

“The EC did well. Some of us our position was that it was needless to have a new voters register. I was part of the Electoral Reforms Committee and we argued that there should not be any major electoral activity including the compilation of a new register in an election year. Some of us spoke against, but the Electoral Commission stood its ground and did it nicely.”

“After the registration exercise, the transparency with which they did everything was unprecedented. The BVDs also functioned well. The voting process was also seamless because these BVDs worked well. So when it comes to elections I think everything went well. If you compare it to previous elections, I think this was one of the most transparent,” he said on Net 2.