Creation of West Africa Electoral Commission will deepen democracy – Speaker

Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Prof. Aaron Mike Oquaye says the creation of West Africa Electoral Commission will be of benefit to African countries as it deepens its democracy.

Addressing delegates at the high-level policy dialogue on the future of governance in Africa on the theme “Is a new concept of governance the key to accelerating the prosperity agenda?”, the Speaker said the establishment of the electoral body will prevent issues of irregularities in our voting system because it is regulated by a single body.

During Ghana’s 2016 electioneering period, the register, which was used for the conduct of the 2012 general elections sparked protest from some political parties and other stakeholders who demanded for a new register claiming the current one was fraught with foreign names among others.

The New Patriotic Party which spearheaded the demand claimed the register was incurably flawed and could not be relied on for the 2016 Elections. The party’s running mate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia in 2015 presented what the party said evidence to back its claim that there were 76,000 names of Togolese who are on Ghana’s voters register.

But the EC shot down their demand for a new register after a Committee constituted to look into the issues found no basis for the register to be changed.

Prof. Mike Oquaye believes this would help prevent such anomalies in the future and is therefore advocating for the establishment of a West Africa Electoral Commission.

“If we had a West Africa Electoral Commission, the register which becomes a bone of contention can become international. You cannot be on the Cote d’Ivoire register, on the Togo register, and on the Ghana register at the same time because there is one credible international register”.

“And yet we forget about such simple arrangements sometimes under the cover of sovereignty which it diffuses when there is civil war. If we had a very powerful West Africa Electoral Commission, they themselves become a regulatory body so that no one person, president or monarch can do whatever he or she likes in his or her backyard”, he said.

The High-Level Policy dialogue held at the Kempinski Gold Coast City Hotel on Friday, September 29 is a two-day programme which ends on the 30th of September.

The event was organized by the United Nations Development and it brings together leading policymakers, practitioners, academics and civil society organizations.