As the debate rages on the possible postponement of the 7 December 2020 general elections in the midst of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, a Political Science Lecturer at the University of Ghana, Legon, Professor Ransford Edward Van Gyampo, has called for broader consultations of the stakeholders in order to build a consensus on the issue.
According to Professor Gyampo, the destruction caused by the novel coronavirus disease requires that all actors of the political space work closely with health officials, security and governance experts on the health, public safety, security risks, democratic and constitutional imperatives and implications of the decision to go ahead with the elections.
Gyampo was quoted by Daily Graphic on Thursday, 16 April 2020 as saying that with the increasing number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 by today, there are concerns that the development could affect the conduct of the December 7 presidential and parliamentary elections.
On Thursday, the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) General Secretary, John Boadu, announced the suspension of parliamentary primaries in constituencies in which the party has sitting Members of Parliament (MPs) indefinitely as a result of the lockdown occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic. The parliamentary primaries were scheduled for 25 April 2020.
Last week, Maxwell Kofi Jumah, a firebrand of the NPP called for the postponement of the December 7 elections, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it was fiercely resisted by Afriyie Ankrah, the chairman of the Electoral Committee of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). They explained that per the World Health Organization (WHO) prediction, the disease would recede by June, which might pave the way for the election to be held as scheduled.
Meanwhile, the Majority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei-Mensah Bonsu, early this week cleared the air that the Parliament has not taken any decision on whether to conduct the election or postpone it.
Ghana has recorded six-hundred and fourty-one confirmed cases and seventy-eight recoveries with eight deaths at the time of filing this report.
– APA
