Sakara cautions EC over new constituencies

The 2012 Presidential Candidate of the Convention People’s Party, Dr Abu Sakara is advising the Electoral Commission to proceed with caution regarding the creation of the additional 45 new constituencies which is expected to receive legal backing from Parliament.

According to him, there are a lot of issues pending such as the core definition of the boundary lines of constituencies as well as concerns about the timing of the event and the perceived advantage that it gives to a well resourced incumbent.

He said because of these, the EC needs to proceed with extreme caution in order to find political accommodation and compromise across the political spectrum.

“To suggest that we can simply go ahead without finding a compromise solution will be foolhardy, because we know how critical this election is, not just to the political parties but most importantly to Ghana and especially the Youth of the Country”.

“As far as Presidential votes are concerned, it doesn’t really matter at which polling or constituency they are; they are counted across the country to determine who wins, so they are not as affected by the ongoing concerns as the constituency votes that determine parliamentarians.

“This is really where the problem is and this is why we are saying that a political accommodation that reaches a compromise across the political parties should be sought’.

Dr Sakara indicated that the Political accommodation will be to look at the possibility that will reach a compromise where we could keep the results of Presidential votes across all the constituencies and perhaps look to postpone parliamentary voting in some particular constituencies where there is contention or dissatisfaction over timing.

“That is really the issue and we are saying that we should consider it seriously. We agree that nobody should encumber the electoral commission in it work but we also are aware that common sense must prevail” Dr Sakara said.

“There is already high tension and there is a perception of abuse of incumbency by this unprecedented number of constituencies created in a particular election. This also creates significant room for concern that the outcome of the election might be affected by the first march that the opposition parties would have to undertake in order to be able to complete preparation and compete in all of these newly created constituencies. Where we are now, we hope that voices of reason will prevail and that some kind of political accommodation can be found. It is not enough to simply say because there is a legal backing for it that we should simply procede without recourse to addressing the legitimate concerns that people have raised." 


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