EC reduced itself to compiling voters register and conducting elections – Prof Gyampo

The Electoral Commission of Ghana since the time of Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan have reduced itself to compiling voters register and conducting elections every four years, Professor Ransford Edward Yaw Gyampo has said.

According to the Political Science lecturer, Ghana has about 30 political parties and out of these, 28 of them are mere election machines; they are not political parties. It’s only the NPP and NDC that can be described as political parties.

Prof Gyampo indicated that if the electoral laws are being applied properly by the Electoral Commission to both the NPP and NDC, the two will struggle to be called political parties.

“There are so many rules that the EC does not apply. EC has reduced itself to an organization that is only interested in compiling voters register and conducting elections.

“But they have other regulatory roles that are supposed to be performing and they have been deficient and incompetent in performing those roles since the days of Kwadwo Afari-Gyan.

“They are supposed to be regulating political parties to ensure that they have their branches in certain areas of the country, they render their accounts…; political parties are supposed to function as number one…” Prof Ransford Gyampo explained on Starr Chat monitored by GhanaWeb.

He further stated that presenting a political party to partake in an election is about two per cent of the functions of political parties.

“They are supposed to perform functions as agents of interest at aggregation, agents of interest at articulation, agents of political socialization, agents for the recruitment and training of future political leaders and they are supposed to be functioning as credible oppositions by putting the government on their toes,” Prof Gyampo stressed.

He noted that in advanced countries, for instance, political parties conduct research into national crises such as COVID-19 and present their findings to the government and the regulator, thus, the Electoral Commission is supposed to ensure that they are done.

“But our EC is only interested in compiling new voters register whether we like it or not and holding elections and they have abandoned their regulatory functions.”