EC's plans to cancel registration of 17 political parties apt

The Electoral Commission (EC) has served notice to revoke the registration of 17 political parties if they fail to respond in writing justifying why they should be maintained on the electoral roll.

According to the electoral management body, all the 17 listed political parties have no national and regional offices as required by the Act governing political parties.

Reacting to the move, political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, Professor Ransford Gyampo, called on all stakeholders to support the Electoral Commission in its bid to enforce its regulatory mandate.

“Democracy is expensive, so if you have political parties worth their salt, and they satisfy all the requirements that make them political parties and say we practice multi-party democracy, then they should all be on the ballot papers if we have the resources.”

“So the need to cut off these parties shouldn’t be because they are expensive to maintain but because they are not political parties but election machines. The EC can invoke some aspects of the Political Parties Act to cancel their registration and if they disagree, they can go to court”, he said.

Between May and June 2022, the EC embarked on a nationwide exercise to inspect the offices of all registered political parties in Ghana.

But after the exercise, the EC invoked Section 15 (3) (c) of the Political Parties Act of 2000, Act 574, which mandates it to cancel the registration of Political Parties which do not have offices at the National and Regional levels.