Abolish Voting In Presidential Run-offs -HKP

The director of Legal Policy and Governance, Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), Prof. Kwesi Prempeh has called for the immediate abolition of voting when there is a run-off in the Presidential election. He said such re-runs can stall the country?s development if the elected president from a run-off happens to have minority in Parliament.

According to the professor of law in the United States, the constitution should be amended to allow the electoral commission to declare a winner by looking at the number of seats the two parties had.

He said if any of the two parties for the run-off gets majority MPs in Parliament, that party should be declared the winner for the presidential slot irrespective of what number of votes the party got in the first round of voting. The professor also suggested a fixed number of 200 MPs for Parliament, 27 ministers and an active parliament that can stop the abuse of wide executive power the 1992 constitution has given particularly the President.