Proposal for Regional Threshold Electoral System: Illogical and Ill-conceived

By Bala Ali
Following the institution of the Prof. H. Kwasi Prempeh-led 2025 Constitutional Review Commitee, a section of the citizens with ill-motivated, political agenda have openly called for a review of the country's electoral system. According to these individuals, the committee should review the electoral system of the country to adopt Regional Threshold system, where a presidential candidate is required to win certain number of regions or constituencies before being declared a winner.

Interestingly, this call is coming from individuals who are sympathetic to the National Democratic Congress (NDC). What makes the call dangerous is the fact that it is coming at a time that the 2024 New Patriotic Party's (NPP) presidential candidate obtained 41.61% of the total votes cast, winning only three regions - North East, Ashanti and Eastern.

In the first place, this open proposal, is constitutionally flawed. This stems from the fact that it is only suitable for countries that practice the federal system of government. So, a unitary state like Ghana with a unitary constitution cannot adopt that kind of electoral system. Thus, the runoff voting system, where a second round of voting is conducted between the top two candidates in the event that any of them fails to obtain 50+1% of the total votes cast, is adopted to suit the country's constitutional and governance system.

So, those calling for the Regional Threshold electoral system should be fair enough to embrace a federal constitution, where each of the regions/states in the country will be given semi-autonomous powers.

Should this happen, the various regions or states in the country will have their own state legislatures and governors with legislative and executive powers respectively. These political systems will in turn give them the rights and powers over the use of their resources, including their natural resources.

In case this happens, the country's wide gap inequality in development will be deepened. Consequently, the poor regions or states will be reduced to vehicles of political power for politicians at the national level at the expense of their development. Is that what these NDC sympathisers want to reduce their strongholds into?

It is also important to state the obvious that the federal system of government which goes with the Regional Threshold Electoral System is expensive to run. It will cost Ghana huge sums of funds to establish regional political systems like legislatures, among others. The cost of running these systems like conducting elections and resourcing them to run the regions and states compound the cost of running the nation.

This renders the proposal for this system illogical and poorly conceived with ill political agenda that has no place in the country's development.

The author is an Information Officer with the Information Services Department and a columnist with Modern Ghana.