The Member of Parliament for Akuapim South, O. B. Amoah is urging the Electoral Commission (EC) to quickly present to Parliament the required legislation to back the District Assembly and Unit Committee elections.
[contextly_sidebar id=”bQwzSimqTtlSDMS6LpRSrCWHdWJmi0uN”]“The EC should see this as very urgent and an emergency situation, anytime very soon the regulation should come to Parliament and we should move on from there.”
The Supreme Court last Friday cancelled the district assembly election, which was originally set for March 3.
According to the Court, the EC was organizing the election with an immature Constitutional Instrument.
The court made the ruling after an assemblyman aspirant, Benjamin Eyi Mensah sued the EC for preventing him from filing his nomination to contest in the Eyipeh Electoral Area despite fulfilling all the requirements.
The EC subsequently announced that it is taking steps to present a new Constitutional Instrument to Parliament for consideration.
Speaking to Citi News’ Richard Dela Sky, O.B Amoah said any delay in forwarding the legislation could have dire consequence on the nation’s local governance system saying “we will have only the District Chief Executive or the MCE running the assembly, any decision that requires the endorsement of assembly members cannot be taken, that is the challenge we have.”
Tenure of office of assembly members to expire in March
He further explained that tenure of office of the current assembly members will expire in March adding that when that happens the “Assembly cannot hold any meeting because they would be no assembly members to attend the meeting; whoever attends will just be attending for the sake of it because his term would have expired.”
He insisted that the District Assembly “Act is very clear. The term of office of any assembly member is four years and if you look at the situation, the last time we had election it was 2010 and earlier 2011. Obviously earlier this year, their four year mandate would have expired.”
The challenge
“The challenge is that EC knew this, and EC should have come far earlier to Parliament so that it would have been cleared in the regulations and the legal regime for the election, the rest would have followed. Looking at what has gone on, it means they have a very tight timetable. It’s obvious that there would be a time when every member of the assembly would have had his or her term expired in the assembly,” O.B Amoah added.
Meanwhile, Parliament has summoned the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan to answer questions leading to the postponement of the election and the way forward.
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By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana