"Let my vote count": Ghana urged to adopt a South African attitude by electing deputies

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Ghana's political system for the election of deputies has been criticized for stifling the voice of the people.

In a comprehensive article, Ghana's left-wing political movement, the Economic Fighters League, has concluded that the first-past-the-post system that declares a winning candidate by a simple majority means that the voices of the minority are insignificant.

They refer to the proportional representation system in which, if a party wins, say 10% of the votes are allocated to it, 10% of the seats are allocated, which makes each vote more important to obtain representation in parliament.

EFL argued that it was a crucial solution that allowed the Parliament to have divergent views going beyond the "binary dependence" on the political parties of the MPCs and the EU. NDCs.

The Economic Fighters League made the presentation after the remarkable progress made by a five-year-old political party in South Africa, the Economic Freedom Fighters, an ideological ally of the group in Ghana.

The EFF formed in July 2013 increased from 25 seats in 2104 to 44 in the 400-seat National Assembly following the recent legislative elections of 8 May. The party is now the second largest in three provinces, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the North West Province after the overthrow the Democratic Alliance.

While the ANC, which has ruled the country since the abolition of apartheid in 1994, remains a dominant party, political observers estimate that the decline of 62.15 percent in 2014 to 57.50 % in 2019 is a source of concern.

This is also the lowest vote share of the ANC since the elections that followed the end of apartheid in 1994. The official opposition, the Democratic Alliance ( DA), increased from 22.23% to 20.77%. Fighters for Economic Freedom (EFF) experienced significant growth, going from 6.35% to 10.79%.

Ghana's Economic Fighters League stresses that the progress of minor parties depends on the proportional representation system.

The South African National Assembly has 14 political parties and Ghana two, which prevents more than 20 others despite the promise of multi-party democracy in the 1992 constitution.

"The 1992 constitution of Ghana pretends to give us a democracy but ends up giving us a two-party dictatorship," the group stressed, noting that the privileged system would allow for inclusion, responsibility and true democracy.

The EFL noted that inclusion in Ghanaian politics had not been interpreted as giving some opposition figures positions in the government.

President Kuffuor appointed Mallam Issah as Minister of Sports and Papa Kwesi Nduom of the People's Congress Party (PCP) as Minister of Public Sector Reform in the Nuclear Power Plant Administration in 2001.

The current president, Akufu-Addo, has appointed Dr Edward Mahama, flag bearer of the PNC in 2016, ambbadador extraordinary.

"… The reality is that these spasmodic appointments have had rather disastrous consequences on the credibility of these minor parties."

"As shown by the loss of fortune of the PCP and the PNC, the political inclusion resulting from the goodwill of the NPP and the NDC has resulted in a decrease in the confidence of the mbades in these parties" , says the nine-page document.

EFL said its proposal would address the mindset of the winner of the Ghanaian policy, which was linked to political violence as MPs and parties bent to secure their victory.

In a proportional representation system, MPs will not have to spend so much money on their individualist campaigns to go to Parliament, as they enter Parliament seeking more votes from their party, the document said.

Ghana's current electoral system has "proved pretentious and useless in practice".