Why Ghana could have 300 constituencies by 2024

Aerial view of a parliamentary session

Minority leader Haruna Iddrisu has hinted that the Election Commission, EC, is seeking to create 25 new constituencies before the next general election.

According to him, the EC was looking for new electoral structures using the deadlock around Santrokofi, Akpafu, Lolobi and Likpe, SALL. The people of SALL did not vote in the last parliamentary elections and did not obtain a candidate for the chief of the district executive.

Haruna said in an interview on a local television station last week that the Democratic National Congress, NDC, will resist the new constituencies which will bring the number of seats in parliament to 300 from the current 275.

“We are receiving signals that the Election Commission intends to create additional new constituencies of about 25, including 11 in a single region of the country. We will resist it, ”he said on Point of View on Accra-based Citi TV.

“The EC is working to create additional constituencies using SALL and from what I hear they may want 11 of those seats to be in one region of the country. With the 12, 10, 15 others spread among other populated areas like the Greater Accra region and others.

He did not disclose which region was to get the exceptional increase except to add: “I say the NDC is determined to seek major electoral reforms in 2024 and we will not agree to anything less than those reforms.”

In comments apparently supporting former President John Dramani Mahama’s call for police supporters to vote at the polling station, he said: “We are not going to accept the reporting of results at any regional level. That all polling stations have an impact on the 50 plus one percent.

“For the purposes of the elections, Ghana is delimited by constituencies, which is why you have polling stations, so for the presidential results, it is not for nothing that the constitution says that the chairman of the electoral commission is the returning officer.

“So each constituency result must be declared at the national level by the chairman of the electoral commission and not by a regional collation and it should be a calculation of the results of the polling stations aggregated into a whole”, a- he told Bernard Avle in an interview on Citi TV. .

“Ghana for electoral purposes is delimited by constituencies, that’s why you have polling stations, so the presidential results are not for nothing that the constitution says that the chairman of the electoral commission is the returning officer so every constituency result should be declared nationally by the chairman of the electoral commission and not a regional collation and it should be a calculation of aggregate polling station results as a whole, ”he said to Bernard Avle in an interview with Citi TV.

GNA Report – EC Failed to Create New Guan Constituency

A source at the Election Commission told the Ghanaian News Agency in December 2020 – after the general election – that the EC was unable to create the constituency of Guan because the constitutional instrument needed to create constituency no. could not have matured in the 7th Parliament.

Parliament was suspended on November 9 for the December elections and resumed on December 14.

The source said the EC could not table the Constitutional Instrument (CI) for the constituency creation amendment because the 7th Parliament could not sit for 21 days before its dissolution at midnight on January 6, 2021.

“If we had started the process in the 7th legislature, the CI could not have matured. In that case, the process will have to start all over in the 8th Legislature, ”the source said.

“The CI to be tabled must remain in Parliament for 21 sitting days and enter into force if 2/3 of the deputies authorize its removal. It is after the adoption of the modified CI that the EC can consider the holding of any election in this created constituency ”, indicated the source.