The date for the 2016 elections remains in limbo as the Electoral Commission (EC) awaits government to make final inputs on legislation towards effecting the change of the date.
Since its return to multiparty democracy in 1992, Ghana has held general elections on December 7, a situation, which might change this year to November 7.
However, Deputy Commissioner in charge of Corporate Services, Georgina Opoku Amankwah, in an interview with Class News, said the Commission was still open to holding the elections on the statutory date of December 7 if the change is not successful, saying the matter was now in the hands of government to do the necessary legislation.
“All that we need to do have already been done and we have sent it to the Attorney General’s office. I think they have even done the second gazetting, so now I am sure it will be with either Cabinet or Council of State…we do not have anything to do with it again. Until Cabinet finishes with it and then the Council of State will also have to look at it, then it will come to parliament for the first time, go back and come again, so EC now does not have anything to do with it,” she told parliamentary correspondent Ekow Annan.
“As for the time left for the elections, we are not worried because already we have 7 December [as a date]. If it doesn’t work well and the 7 November cannot be done, we don’t have a problem; it will even help us because it will be a sort of an extension for the EC, so we don’t have a problem. It is not the EC that proposed that [elections] should be held on [7 November]; it is the reformed committee’s recommendation, but if it cannot be, then fortunately 7 December is there.”
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com/100.5fm
