Promoting inclusiveness; IDEG pushes for Mixed-Member Proportional Representation

The role of women in society’s development cannot be overemphasized. Women are key agents in development. It is for this reason that women’s equal access to and full participation in power structures and decision-making have become crucial since the United Nations Declaration of a Decade for Women in Mexico City in 1975.

This culminated in the adoption of the World Plan of Action that mandated governments to initiate policies and strategies to provide women with the opportunities to participate meaningfully in decisions that affect their lives.

The Beijing Platform for Action, to which Ghana was committed, for instance, sets a target of 30 per cent representation of women in all decision-making positions at all levels.

Based on this realisation, it is reasonable to expect that it would be easier for more women to participate in politics, decision-making and public life, considering the fact that Ghana’s population is made up of 51 per cent women.

Sadly, women’s participation and representation in national politics in Ghana have continued to decline over the years. It is against this background that IDEG, a policy think tank, proposes Mixed-Member Proportional Representation (MMPR) and the Passage of the Affirmative Action Bill to enable Ghana to ensure full participation of women and other marginalised groups in the nation’s politics.

IDEG believes that a system that ensures fairness in gender representation at any level of decision-making, particularly in governance, is commendable because it is a pragmatic way to support and encourage the participation of women in national life.

Presently, women are underrepresented in the Ghanaian Parliament and in many other important public institutions. The representation of women in Ghana’s Parliament continues to be very low although records indicate that there have been marginal increases over the past decade and a half.

For instance, out of the 275 Members of Parliament (MP) in Ghana’s 8th Parliament, which was inaugurated on the 7th January 2021, only 40 are women, with both the governing New Patriotic Party and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) having 20 each. The figure therefore translates into 14.5% of the total population of MPs in the country’s parliament.

As part of the IDEG’s proposed Constitutional Reforms, the amendments of Articles 55(3) and 243(1) are expected to lead to multiparty democracy and local governance reforms in Ghana. Additional reforms proposed by IDEG, particularly the Mixed Member Proportional Representation System are intended to end the marginalisation of women at the local level.

In this system, women would be progressively given increased representation at the local level of governance in accordance with nationally agreed proportions size. This means political parties will offer women candidates to stand for positions in the Assemblies that have been reserved only for women.

This would ensure that Women’s participation at both local and national levels could be increased with the Mixed Member Proportional Representation and the passage of the Affirmative Action Bill (AA Bill) into law.

IDEG has additionally called for the abolition of the practice whereby the government appoint 30 per cent of assembly members. IDEG believes that the institution of government appointees has not met its original purpose of bringing different experts and expertise on to the assemblies to provide technical backstopping. Neither has the system improved women’s representation tremendously.

According to IDEG, the government appointees’ option is now used as a patronage instrument for rewarding political clients at the district level, hence the proposal for the abolition of the government appointees system and the replacement by the Mixed Member Proportional Representation system.

IDEG explained that although the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system also known as the majoritarian system is credited with producing strong and stable governments, its major shortcomings are a lack of inclusiveness and parliamentary representation that does not always reflect the true popularity a party enjoys throughout the population.

It believes that to circumvent the shortcomings of the FPTP, many countries particularly in Europe have shifted on to the proportional representation system of voting.

The proportional representation system is an electoral system in which the distribution of seats in a representative assembly follows very closely the proportion of votes cast for each party in an election. This means if a party obtains 30 per cent of the votes in an election it will be allocated 30 per cent of the seats in an assembly.

IDEG advocates for the kind of policy consistency that will enable the party-based elected Chief Executive to transparently identify the party affiliation of the Assembly members to facilitate the forging of inter-party cooperation, consensus building and principled compromises.
IDEG proposed that in the absence of party-based assembly elections, the Chief Executive with a clear party identity would find it difficult to chart the inter-party consensus on tough decisions that may prove critical to district development and democracy. It is for this reason that IDEG proposes that assembly members should also be elected on a party basis through the MMPR system.

It proposed that the MMPR system could easily be adopted to Ghana’s district-level elections nationwide and that the application would be simple and straightforward. The 70 per cent of assembly members will continue to be elected from existing electoral areas but on the ticket of political parties and according to the first-past-the-post system. It proposed that when the 30 per cent government appointees are abolished, the parties could contest it through the MMPR system and only female candidates and/or other disadvantaged groups can contest. IDEG further indicated that this arrangement will not stop women from contesting for electoral areas as well. The proportion of seats reserved for women could be increased to achieve the targets of the Affirmative Action Bill (AA Bill).

On the issue of the passage of the Affirmative Action Bill, IDEG stressed that passing it will complement the MMPR in giving women and other marginalised groups greater representation in local government.

For IDEG, when the AA Bill is passed, women will be empowered by their numbers, and will be seen to play leading roles in various facets of governance, and that the reservation of quotas for only women will not just coopt women into active participation in matters of deliberation and decision making but will also give them a louder voice at both the local and central levels of governance.

IDEG believes that the AA Bill will redress areas of social, economic and educational imbalance. Additionally, it is also aimed at eliminating discrimination and the need for equal opportunity for both men and women.