Intensive investigations conducted by The Al-Hajj newspaper have revealed that Ghana has settled on Nov 7 as the new date for the nation�s parliamentary and presidential elections instead of December 7 as has been the norm since the inception of the Fourth Republican Constitution in 1992.
Thus, the next elections in this country will be on November 7, 2012 instead of December 7.
Credible sources versed in the workings of the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) told this paper on condition of anonymity that the new date of November 7 will be the solution of the perennial transitional challenges that the country faces any time there is an election and especially a change of power from a democratically elected government to another.
Again, governments which are lucky to be re-elected to serve a second term of four years would also get ample time to put a winsome team together before they are sworn in.
The Al-Hajj has gathered that though the new date for the elections have been shifted one month behind, the swearing in of the President will always be on the 7th of January. This would be two clear months after the elections.
According to the sources the decision to accept these changes to the political calendar of the country is the result of the numerous petitions presented to the CRC in favour of changes of the date.
The sources said, the Commission was inundated by petition to change the date of the elections and most of the petitioners are in favour of November 7, two clear months before the swearing in of the President.
The Al-Hajj�s further painstaking research has revealed that majority of the proposals submitted on one of the 25 most popular issues tabled by the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) after its in-depth analysis of the over 85,000 submissions received are in favour of the change of the date.
All the political parties are said also to be solidly in favour of the change of the date so as to be convenient for whoever wins an elections to get ample time to form a competent team to govern the nation.
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) which has also been pushing for the passage of the Presidential Transition Bill in order to ensure that the next transition process is devoid of the acrimony as characterized the previous transitions in 2001 and 2009 proposed to the Constitution Review Commission a change in the voting date from December 7 to November 7 to allow for a longer transition period.
This in their opinion would give a breathing space for the incoming government especially in the event of a run-off, as happened in the 2000 and 2008 elections.
It would be recalled that, this country was nearly plunged into a constitutional crises in January 2009 when John Evans Atta Mills and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) won the general elections which had gone for a third round of voting in early January.
Political pundits were puzzled that less than 96 hours for the mandate of out-going President John Kufuor to expire, there wasn�t still a clear winner in the two earlier polls held on December 7th and December 28th presidential.
So therefore, when President Mills set up the CRC by a Constitutional Instrument 2010 (C.I.) 64 as a Commission of Inquiry to conduct a consultative review of the operation of the 1992 Constitution and based on the experience of what happened in 2009 transition and that of 2008, which also incidentally had to go into a run-off; it became apparent and necessary for political actors and civil society to take advantage of the constitutional review process to call for an amendment to the transitional period.
Ghana has had almost two decades of uninterrupted constitutional rule under the Fourth Republic, basing itself on the 1992 Constitution.
The nine-member Commission is made up of the following persons:
1. Prof. Albert K. Fiadjoe, Chair
2. 2. Osabarimba Kwesi Atta II, Commissioner
3. 3. Kumbun-Naa Yiri II, Naa Alhaji Iddirisu Abu, Commissioner
4. 4. Mr. Akenten Appiah-Menka, Commissioner
5. 5. Mrs. Sabina Ofori-Boateng, Commissioner
6. 6. Very Reverend Prof. Samuel K. Adjepong, Commissioner
7. 7. Dr. Nicholas Amponsah, Senior Lecturer, Commissioner
8. 8. Mr. Gabriel Pwamang, Commissioner
9. 9. Mrs. Jean Mensa, Commissioner
The Executive Secretary of the Commission is Dr. Raymond A. Atuguba.
Source: The Al-Hajj/Ghana
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