All you need to know about changing Ghana’s election dates

The Constitutional, Parliamentary and Legal Affairs Committee of Ghana’s Parliament in its report to the plenary, recommends that the Constitutional Amendment Bill 2016, which will change the country’s date of election from December 7th to the first Monday of November in election years, should be adopted and passed by Parliament.

Before reaching this conclusion, the Committee considered a number of issues of interest surrounding the amendment.  The Committee took note of the Electoral Commission’s assurance that it will be in the position to organise the election’s in November, in spite of the delays and adjustments it has made to its original Calendar for the 2016 elections.

The Commission told the Committee that government has honoured its financial obligations to them so far, and thus, they do not foresee any challenge with funding for this year’s elections.

A key concern that came up during the public forum on the Bill was that amending the constitution to change Ghana’s election date, will be in breach of Article 2 of the ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance, which disallows modifications in electoral laws six months before elections.

Ghana is a signatory to this ECOWAS protocol.

In response to this concern, the Attorney General told the Committee that so long as the law is being modified with the consent of the majority of stakeholders in the country, the enactment would not constitute a breach of the protocol.

Again, the Attorney General clarified to the committee that, the constitutional Amendment cannot be passed now, and implemented later in 2020, as some MPs and other civil society groups like the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG) have suggested.

According to the Attorney General, the implementation cannot be postponed because this piece of legislation is a constitutional amendment and thus must be operationalized right after passing.

The Committee observed that, the passage of the bill will pave way for another constitutional Instrument to be laid in Parliament, to fix the date for the Presidential elections to coincide with the November 7th.

There is the need for the new C.I because this amendment deals with only Article 112(4) which specifies the timeline for the election of the Members of Parliament.

In view of this, Article 63(2) which deals with the timing of Presidential elections must also be amended with another C.I so that the dates will coincide.

The EC however told the Committee that they had two drafts of the proposed C.I for both November and December in preparedness of any eventuality as regards Parliament’s passage or otherwise of the Constitutional Amendment Bill.

Parliament is yet to debate the report of the Committee.