IPAC has no legal backing
A deputy Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), Mr Amadu Sulley, has stated that the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) has no legal backing.
He said the main function of IPAC was to deliberate, share ideas and advise on electoral matters.
According
to him, the decisions of IPAC were not binding on the EC but the
Commission took the IPAC's deliberations seriously, since they could be a
collective search for a transparent electoral system.
Mr Sulley
said this during a four-day meeting between Ugandan political parties
with representatives in parliament and their Ghanaian counterparts in
Accra.
The programme, which was on the theme: "The role of
Ghanaian Political Parties in Shaping and Influencing the National
Agenda - Lessons from Ghana," was under the sponsorship of the Institute
of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Netherlands Institute of Multi-Party
Democracy.
Mr Sulley said whenever there was an issue and a
consensus emerged from the dialogue and it was reasonable, practicable
and lawful the EC gave it the serious consideration it deserved.
He
said the IPAC was made up of representatives of all registered
political parties and the EC and it was structured in such a way that
there were Regional Inter-Party Advisory Committees (RIPAC) and District
Inter-Party Advisory Committees (DIPAC).
Mr Sulley said the
regional and district committees were made up of the registered
political parties in the regions and the districts with all their
meetings being chaired by the EC officers.
He said the meetings
of IPAC in an election year were normally held once every month at the
offices of the EC and the meetings were attended by representatives of
all the registered political parties
Mr Sulley said IPAC meetings
were chaired by the chairman of the EC and in his absence, his position
was taken by one of the two deputies.
A visiting Senior Fellow
of the IEA, Brigadier General Francis A. Agyemfra (Retd), said the
institute had contributed greatly to qualitatively improve the nature of
Ghana's democracy and this had led to stability.
He said this
stability was traceable to healthy inter-party relations developed
through the medium of the Institute of Economic Affairs/Netherlands
Institute of Multi-Party Democracy (IEA/NIMD), Ghana Political Parties
Programme and the IPAC, which had led to a peaceful coexistence among
people of diverse ethnic and religious beliefs and backgrounds.
Brigadier
General Agyemfra said Ghana had now found a vehicle for building the
necessary institutional capacity, inter-party engagement and the needed
personal network that would enable her to consign past rancour,
bitterness, divisiveness, suspicion, hatred and acrimony, as well as
extreme partisanship, to the dustbin of history.
He said
political parties were increasingly realizing that neither a single
party nor a single government could do it almost alone.
"Therefore,
whatever their party affiliation, whatever the colour of their party
symbol and whatever their ideology, they have a collective
responsibility to work together in the national interest in raising the
standard of living and quality of life of all Ghanaians.
"When Ghana prospers, we all prosper," he said.
GNA