The main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has rejected the Electoral Commission’s recently adopted electoral reforms, saying such a process without the biggest opposition party makes mockery of the country’s electoral system.

The EC, following an IPAC meeting to review the 2020 polls, adopted some 16 reforms. 

The NDC boycotted the process.

Following the announcement of the reforms by the election management body, the NDC held a press conference on Thursday, 20 May 2021 at which it expressed reservations against the process, saying such reforms cannot be a product of the EC’s IPAC meeting with low-ranking political parties, some of who did not even take part in the December polls. 

“I have had the privilege of serving on IPAC for close to 20 years now and IPAC has been a platform for consensus-building and there have been opportunities where electoral reforms have been proposed and the arrangement has always been to ensure that key stakeholders in our electoral process are part of deliberations on electoral reforms”, Mr Ofosu-Ampofo argued. 

In other words, he noted, “the strength of political parties are considered in all the electoral reforms that have taken place over the period and I have had the opportunity of participating in quite a number of them and at any point in time, you have the NDC, the NPP; the two major political parties, fully represented with the minority parties coming together to have one or two representatives to serve on the committee in addition to other key stakeholders and civil society organisations and some international agencies that fund our electoral processes”. 

“We believe that the EC should have adopted a rather different approach toward electoral reforms after this election by asking the stakeholders, the political parties, to come out with proposals for electoral reforms first, compel them and then have a meeting where we’ll put them in a composite form and then discuss them”, he said, adding: “The EC itself lacks a lot of credibility”.  

Concerning the minor parties, Mr Ofosu-Ampofo said: “We respect other small political parties and we want to help them to grow but if you participate in a league process and about 16 teams played in the league and then at the end of the league, you are going to review it and you’re bringing teams from second and third division who were not part of the competition to come and review that competition, what are they going to review?” 

“So, political parties which did not even participate in the presidential and parliamentary elections, cannot be the ones the EC will be engaging to review elections in which they did not even participate”, the NDC Chairman stressed. 

“If it is about future discussions and others [fine], but to review an election where they did not participate in …”