Parties must set up internal adjudicating tribunals*Argues Prof Oquaye at IEA Forum

PROF. Mike Oquaye, the Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament, has asked political parties to establish internal adjudicating tribunals to ensure that the rules and regulations of the parties and the national constitution were obeyed.
He said the tribunals, which should be at the regional and national levels, should ensure that rules, regulations and the procedures for the conduct of party affairs were codified and well laid out.
Prof Oquaye who is also the Member of Parliament for Dome-Kwabenya made the call in a paper titled “Internal Democracy- An Essential Ingredient for a Viable and Stable Multiparty Democracy” at a round-table conference in Accra on Wednesday. It was organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a public policy institute, to mark Democracy Day.
He noted that although political parties had rules, regulations and procedures for sanctioning members who engaged in activities that tend to make the party unattractive and unacceptable to the majority of the electorates.
He said in most cases when members flouted the party’s rules concerning administrative and financial management, elections and other party activities, they should be removed from office and charged in criminal courts where necessary.
Prof. Oquaye said in such instances where the political parties had, for internal reasons, opted to quietly settle differences which arose from such conduct, it happened that culprits rather go trumpeting that they were being witch-hunted, a situation which created unnecessary discord in political parties.
He said the practice, where some people sought to shield those who engaged in fraudulent electoral activities or broke the rules during internal elections, should not be encouraged because it flouted the doctrine of internal party democracy. After all, observance of the law was the first tenet of democratic governance.
He bemoaned the insignificant number of women who had been members of parliament, as apart from 1965 when Ghana had 18.2 per cent of MPs being women, the percentage over the years had hovered around 3.3 and 10.8.
To address the situation, Prof. Oquaye urged political parties to establish a quota for women in all executives positions. For instance, the First Vice persons at all levels should be female, once a male is elected chairperson.
He said internal party democracy was the way to give women their rightful place in shaping the manifestos of political parties and subsequently national policies in general.
He suggested that parties must be required to reserve a number of seats for women and if a party did not have the required number of women on its ballot, it should not take part in the elections.
Prof. Oquaye mentioned the Namibian example where the system had worked to the extent that women now control 43 per cent of the parliamentary seats.
Another method he proposed was the creation of additional 30 seats in Parliament to be competed for exclusively by women on proportional representation basis. With this, the seats would be allotted to the regions on the basis of population strength and the political parties would select candidates to contest accordingly.