The President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe has rubbished the Electoral Commission’s (EC) assertion that it was illegal for the people of Santrokofi, Akpafu, Lolobi, and Likpe (SALL) to vote in the 2022 parliamentary election.
The commission added that it had a constitutional mandate to create a new constituency and educate citizens about the constituency in which they were legally allowed to vote.
However, it said parliament’s calendar could not allow the Constitutional Instrument creating the Guan Constituency to be laid before parliament on time for the election.
This followed claims by Mr Cudjoe that the EC intentionally disenfranchised the people of SALL.
In a statement dated May 17, 2023, Mr Cudjoe stated there was no “constitutional duty” of the commission to create a new constituency, as it claimed.
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He said the commission created constituencies for the 2016 election, placing voters in the SALL Traditional areas into the Hohoe Constituency.
“If the Commission were minded to perform its ‘constitutional duty’, all it had to do was to conduct the Parliamentary elections on 7th December 2020 based on the constituencies that it had previously established for the 2016 elections.
“It is wholly unacceptable that, rather than focus its attention on complying with article 47 of the Constitution and using the existing constituency for voters in the SALL Traditional areas, the Electoral Commission went contrary to articles 47(5) and (6) of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana,” the IMANI president said.
He said the creation of a district by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development is not one of the triggers but the Constitution allows for the commission to review the constituencies it has established for the holding of parliamentary elections.
Mr Cudjoe, therefore, insisted that the EC’s decision to attribute its actions solely to the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development’s creation of a new district demonstrates a lack of faithfulness to Ghana’s constitution.
Below is the full statement by the IMANI president