Akwatia highlights need for by-election reform
The Akwatia Constituency yesterday produced the newest Member of Parliament (MP) after a tense by-election that took on a national character.
Not that the new MP was going to alter the mathematical permutations in the lopsided legislature that is presently heavily tilted in favour of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), but the sheer drive to annexe the seat might have been unnerving for the neutral.
Such was the scenario that the police deployed 5,500 personnel for the by-election, while the Electoral Commission (EC) posted nearly 500 officers to the 119 polling stations for yesterday’s exercise.
Along with National Security operatives, plain-clothes police personnel, National Investigations Bureau staff and other critical personnel on standby for emergencies, the state must have committed close to 7,000 or more personnel to the Akwatia by-election alone.
The decision to deploy these huge numbers of security personnel for the one-day exercise must have been guided by recent history.
Gradually, the country has, perhaps unconsciously, steered itself into a do-or-die political system where electoral victory must be procured at all costs.
In some cases, electoral exercises, including mere voter registration processes, have come with injuries, destruction of property and even deaths.
The Ablekuma North parliamentary partial rerun in July this year was the latest in the unhealthy sequence of electoral violence in Ghanaian political contests.
We acknowledge and commend the efforts of the police for eventually finding the culprits, who have since been convicted to fines by the courts.
Coming in the immediate aftermath of the Ablekuma North parliamentary partial rerun, the concerns about the possibility of violence in Akwatia were not helped by the rhetoric of some political leaders.
For the neutral, the sense of danger was almost tangible.
The reaction of the police hierarchy was to assemble the mass of personnel to neutralise the numbers of the political parties’ supposed thugs as part of efforts to protect and safeguard life and property in Akwatia.
However, assembling around 7,000 personnel of all kinds in Akwatia is a massive burden on the national budget.
For weeks, the police have deployed to the mining town, paying personnel all relevant allowances in addition to feeding and accommodation costs.
Other personnel deployed for the same purpose would attract similar expenses for the state.
The cost of printing ballot sheets as part of the cost of the election management process by the EC is a further drain on scarce resources.
If democracy is expensive, this stretches the oft-stated maxim. But the implications of these deployments stretch beyond the boundaries of Akwatia.
The country’s unimpressive police-civilian population ratio must have worsened in other places, as the bulk of personnel were marched to the Eastern Region mining town for the by-election.
What it means is that other places lost personnel to Akwatia, weakening their own ability to respond to emergency security situations adequately.
How such national resources could be spent on a seat regarded generally as inconsequential to the fortunes of the parties in Parliament is mind-boggling.
The NDC’s 183 seats in Parliament have guaranteed the party a super majority, and the almost certain annexation of the Tamale Central seat will complete a full two-thirds haul for the governing party by the close of the month.
These numbers aside, the party enjoys the support of the four Independent MPs who chose to do business with the majority side in the current ninth Parliament of the Fourth Republic.
The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) had 88 MPs, less than one-third of the 276-member legislature, before the MP for Akwatia, Ernest Kumi, passed away in June.
Elsewhere, existing structures and systems would not require extraordinary deployments for a one-day exercise of this nature.
Given the resources committed to the Akwatia by-election and the fears of violence around the poll, various calls have come up about the need to reform the process of by-elections in the country.
Some have suggested that the party that loses a member should be allowed to replace the member.
Questions have come up about this scenario when an Independent MP is lost, and whether it is appropriate to equate an individual’s electoral victory to a party’s victory.
The Daily Graphic believes that a solution is required as soon as practicable to save the nation the stress of by-election violence, huge resource outlay and other commitments.
