Supreme Court ruling abolishing delegate system creates more problems than it solves — Kofi Bentil

Policy analyst and Senior Vice President of IMANI Africa, Kofi Bentil, has criticised the Supreme Court's decision abolishing the delegate system in political party presidential and parliamentary primaries.

The Policy Analyst argued that the ruling raises significant practical challenges.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-2 majority decision delivered on Wednesday, July 29, ruled that political parties must allow all registered members in good standing to participate in their internal elections, effectively ending the delegate system.

Reacting to the judgment in a social media post the same day, Bentil said Ghana currently lacks the institutional systems needed to effectively implement universal party membership voting.

"Ghana is still a developing nation. We dont have the systems to properly deal with universal membership voting in party primaries. The Ghana Card is the best shot we have towards creating a system which can support this but it is still not fully deployed for this purpose," he argued.

The IMANI Vice President questioned how political parties and electoral authorities would verify party membership and prevent members of one political party from participating in the primaries of another.

He argued that without a credible and verifiable membership register, the ruling could create unintended consequences that undermine the integrity of internal party elections.

"A cardinal rule in Judgments is that a good judgment avoids creating absurdities. You can therefore tell a bad judgment by the absurdities it creates. This judgment will work more absurdities and create more problems than it solves," the policy analyst noted.

The Supreme Court's ruling followed a suit filed by Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe and Dr. Christine Amoako-Nuamah, who challenged the constitutionality of the delegate-based electoral systems used by major political parties.

The plaintiffs argued that the delegate system disenfranchised ordinary party members, encouraged vote-buying and favoured wealthy candidates, advocating instead for a "one member, one vote" system in presidential and parliamentary primaries.