Hurray:

2rd, Oct. 2012

…where is the NPP and their destructive elements

The C.I78, which was laid in Parliament on September 4, 2012, after several withdrawals due to manipulations by the NPP Minority, historically matured yesterday, October 2, after the mandatory 21 parliamentary sitting days, giving legal backing for the EC to increase the current 230 constituencies to 275.

The Committee’s Report recommended that the House withdraws the C.I.78 in accordance with Article 11 (7) of the Constitution because the Instrument held many mistakes and that those irregularities would lead to the disenfranchisement of significant number of eligible voters in the 2012 general elections.

Thus after a frenzied debate, Speaker Edward Doe Adjaho, who presided, asked for a head count for the adoption of the report of the Committee and the report was subsequently rejected with a majority vote of 81 from the NDC and PNC as against 56 from the NPP and the sole CPP MP, Samia Nkrumah.

Consequently, the report was rejected and the Instrument will be passed into law by the close of Tuesday, October 2.

Chairman of the Committee, Mr Kwame Osei-Prempeh, in presenting the report to the House for adoption, said that 26 existing electoral areas under the Local Government (Creation of New Districts Electoral Areas and Designation of Units) Instrument, 2010, (L.I.1983) had been excluded in the C.I.798.

According to him the omission of the electoral areas affected 34 constituencies across all the ten regions adding that the L.I 1983 is the existing law establishing electoral areas in the country and therefore any demarcation of constituency using electoral areas must conform to its provisions.

Mr Osei-Prempeh said the legal effect of the excluded electoral areas is that voters in the affected constituencies are disenfranchised and can therefore not be able to vote in the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections since they are not part of the constituencies created by the EC.

He said coming into force of the C.I.78 will result in several legal challenges arising out of disenfranchisement of registered voters, noting that some existing electoral areas had been excluded from the constitutional Instrument while non-existent electoral areas have been established by the C.I 78.

The majority led by Dominic Azumah, MP for Garu/Tempane, Tamale South MP Haruna Iddrisu and the majority leader Cletus Avoka countered the position of the minority saying the 2012 elections would not based only on electoral areas but on polling stations and therefore no one would be disenfranchised.

They contended that the source of the authority for the EC in preparing the C.I.78 was based on the Constitution and not on L.I.1983 which means that once a person has registered at a particular polling station that person is entitled to vote.

They also argued that the C.I. 78 derives its strength from the Constitution and the L.I. 1983 from the Legislature and are both inferior laws which are all subservient to the Constitution.

Some members of the Minority were however of the view that many voters were going to be disenfranchised because some polling stations were not under any electoral area, arguing that this would amount to human rights abuse.