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 Ms Janet Nabla
Ms Janet Nabla

PNC welcomes NDC proposals but ...

The People’s National Convention (PNC) has welcomed proposals by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to reform the country’s elections.

“It is a welcoming one and we believe it is a fulfillment of one of the objectives of a political party which is to help shape policies,” it said.

It, however, said it was worried that the NDC was unwilling to table its proposals at the Inter Party Advisory Committee (IPAC).

In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the General Secretary of the PNC, Ms Janet Nabla, said the claim that the Electoral Commission (EC) had marginalised the IPAC could not be true.

She said although IPAC was not backed by law, it had been a forum where consensus was built on electoral issues.

“It is our call to the NDC to trust that IPAC can be a very good vehicle to help fine-tune and push these reforms,” she stated.

“Whereas we support majority of the proposals, we believe a second look could be given to proposal number 8, which is suggesting the removal of the regional collation centre. The regional collation center only helps to reduce pressure and facilitates easy collation of the results at the EC headquarters,” she stated.

Ms Nabla suggested that the state supported participating political parties in the general election to collate results.

The NDC has made a number of proposals for reforms to be made in Ghana’s electoral system.

Among the suggestions put forward by the party was that IPAC should be backed by legislation through an amendment to the Electoral Commission Act, 1993, Act 451, which should spell out its composition and functions.

Another recommendation was for legislation to bind the Chairperson of the EC as the Returning Officer of the Presidential Election to afford the agents of the participating political parties and candidates full participation in the collation of the Presidential Election results at the EC’s National Collation Centre.

The NDCs proposals also raised concerns of law enforcement, media coverage, the legal status of the IPAC and the structure of the EC.

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