Internal politics with its usual wrangling is a normal thing in every well established political organization or party, hence contesting each other for positions created and endorsed by a political party’s constitution is part of participatory democracy.
Internal politics has its own challenges, but the interesting thing is that, the parties or the candidates involved, pick up bits and pieces of what happened in the invent of such internal politics or contest and join forces with each other to forge ahead to contest their contenders in the main elections.
An electoral college is a mechanism established by a political organization or party to be used to determine its leaders or representatives. In simple terms, it is a body of electors composed by a political party to elect candidates for a particular office in a political system.
In 2015, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) expanded its electoral college to include all card bearing members of the party to have a say as to who leads the party in the 2016 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. This gave card bearing members of the NDC Party the opportunity to vote in 6,000 polling centres nationwide.
The essence of expanding the NDC Electoral College in 2015 was to broaden democratic participation as electing of Parliamentary candidates, and flag bearer to represent the party in the Parliamentary and Presidential elections respectively, was concerned.
The 2015 Presidential Primaries saw a total of 1,286,728 cast their votes in compliance with the universal adult suffrage system which allows every member of the NDC Party to be registered biometrically to cast his or her vote.
About 1.1 million members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) cast their votes to endorse the candidature of His Excellency John Dramani Mahama. The figure represented 95.10% of NDC members who participated in the ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ voting process.
The primaries were held in 265 constituencies instead of 275 due to some internal wrangling in a few constituencies. The expanded Electoral College saw an end to the delegate system which was too expensive to operate due to high demands which are usually pressed by delegates.
It is however, imperative that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) expands its Electoral College concept to enable every member of the party to cast his or her vote to elect the Party’s flag bearer, national, regional as well as constituency executives. The New Patriotic Party’s Electoral College made up of 144,000 delegates needs to be expanded.
The National Executive Council (NEC), the highest decision making body needs to lead a crusade to expand the NPP Electoral College. When this is adopted and made operational in the party, it will grant access to all members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to have a say as to who leads the party in the Presidential and Parliamentary elections in 2020 and beyond. The same expanded electoral college system will use to elect leaders or executives to man activities of the party at the Constituency, regional and national level.
This approach will thereby deepen democratic participation in our great party since the party takes it roots from strong democratic principles.
The current Electoral College which is mainly made up of few selected delegates allows them to elect officers to represent the party at various levels of the party is not the sure way to go as most members of the party are disenfranchised from having a say as to who steers the affairs the party at the constituency, regional and national levels.
Most often than not, the issue of who becomes a delegate breeds conflict or apathy in our party. Those who are unable to be part of the electoral album that are created for delegates are left behind.
The creation of the electoral album over the years has been a tag of war. The concern of many is that, the compilation of the electoral album is bedevilled with some payment of colossal amount to enable a party member to be made a delegate. This questions the genuineness of the electoral album.
It is a fact that, the delegate system leads to monetization of politics. Money has crept into our body politics today. Bribing delegates to vote for a candidate in a national, regional or constituency elections has become the order of the day. It is a normal practice for a delegate to demand money from a candidate before voting for him or her. This monetization in our body politics in Ghana can be reduced to the barest minimum, if not eliminated entirely by the introduction of the expanded Electoral College system.
It will be a great idea for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to expand its Electoral College system to be used for the upcoming National, Regional and Constituency elections scheduled for next year, 2018 or so.
The National Executive Council, the highest decision making body of the NPP needs to advanced plans to make it possible for the Party to expand its Electoral College which is undoubtedly the sure way to go as a party that has strong or entrenched democratic principles.
The political benefits of expanding the Electoral College far outweigh the delegate system which seeks to disenfranchise a lot of party members who are unable to find their way into the electoral album. It is paramount that, we allow every card bearing member of our great party to be part of the decision to elect people to lead the party at a various levels.
I hope the the National Executive Council, will consider the decision to advance plans to expand the Electoral College to replace the delegate system which is very porous for manipulation.
When this is made possible, it could be use sed for the upcoming National, Regional and Constituency elections nationwide.
Thank you.
Source: SETH APREKU-DANQUAH
