The National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia has welcomed the ruling of the Supreme Court in respect of the delegates voting system used by political parties in the country to elect members to various positions.
He said allowing all registered members of the party to participate in polls will lead to the election of the best candidates into office.
“The larger the group, the better the outcome,” he said on Accra-based JoyNews on August 4.
According to him, “It will reflect the views of all the constituencies, and we already have the register so there is no problem.”
On July 29, the Supreme Court ordered Ghana’s political parties to let every registered member vote in their internal elections, striking down the delegate system in a 5-2 decision.
The ruling upholds a suit brought by three senior politicians, among them the former ministers Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng and Christine Amoako-Nuamah and the veteran NPP figure Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, who argued that confining the vote to a small college of delegates was undemocratic and offended Article 55 of the Constitution, which requires parties to organise themselves along democratic lines.
If implemented as read, the decision replaces the delegate colleges that have settled party primaries for years with a far larger electorate of card-bearing members, potentially running into the millions, at every level from constituency executive to flagbearer.
Mr Asiedu Nketia said although implementing the ruling will come at a cost, they will abide by it.
“Scrapping the delegates system will increase the cost of internal elections. You have to print for over 1 million people. We will comply with the ruling for our presidential primaries which will take place in over a year,” he said.
