Residents in the electoral areas making up the Hohoe Constituency in the Volta Region have pointed out that the election of Energy Minister, John Peter Amewu as parliamentarian for the Hohoe seat is illegal.
This agitation is coming after the Electoral Commission (EC) had dubiously excluded people from 13 out of the thirty (30) electoral areas in the Hohoe constituency during the just-ended presidential and parliamentary elections.
On the eve of the elections, the Jean Mensa-led EC had, under the cover of darkness carved out a brand new constituency from Hohoe without parliamentary approval, in a rather curious case of gerrymandering, the EC had allegedly facilitated Peter Amewu winning the parliamentary seat of the Hohoe constituency.
Consequently, the people, who have come together under group, Concerned Citizens of Hohoe Constituency, are demanding a reversal of the supposed election of John Peter Amewu as MP and the holding of a fresh election that will include all Constituents of the 30 Electoral areas voting.
In a petition, the group wrote the “… the Electoral Commission of Ghana conducts a fresh election in Hohoe Constituency to include all the 30 electoral areas or in the alternative, the EC must take immediate steps to create the new Hohoe Constituency and Guan Constituency and conduct a parliamentary election in the two constituencies before January 7, 2021.”
The petition is signed by Paul Dzamboe and Godfred Osei, two private citizens who pointed out the illegality of the EC’s unilateral decision to separate the 13 electoral areas from the Hohoe, the mother Constituency.
The petition pointed out that the lack of foundation in law automatically means that the supposed declaration of Energy Minister, John Peter Amewu, as MP-elect was null and void.
Addressed to the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission and copied to several Civil Society Organizations, the petition also asked that the EC Chairperson, Jean Adukwei Mensa, and her two deputies, Bossman Asare and Serebour Quaicoe be removed from the Commission for their incompetence.
During the controversial decision of the Akufo-Addo administration to carve the Oti Region out of the Volta Region, the people of Lolobi and Akpafu, had protested moves to capture them in the Oti Region saying they preferred to remain part of the Volta Region and under the Hohoe constituency.
The people of Lolobi and Akpafu have been demanding that they be allowed to join the Volta Region, a thing that the government used all sorts of legal acrobatics to prevent.
When the time came for elections, the EC was saddle with the trouble of where to put the people of Akpafu and Lolobi, in addition to the people of Santrokofi and Likpe who are collectively referred to as SALL.
Because the Supreme Court had ruled that the people of the so-called SALL could not be put in two constituencies, they could neither vote in their constituencies in either Oti or Volta. It was in the midst of this mess that Jean Mensa, the EC boss, issued a press statement promising that the people of SALL would be made to vote in their “mother Constituency.”
Later the EC would explain “mother constituency” as a new constituency, Guan to be created for them.
However, as the petitioners point out, the EC has no power under the law to create Constituencies.
Consequent to the mess created by the EC, a total of 13 constituencies have been left disenfranchised in the matter of the Parliamentary elections.
Many political pundits have said that if the people had been allowed to vote in their mother constituency, Hohoe, the NPP’s John Peter Amewu would never have been elected MP.
As Ghana’s Parliament is hung now because both the NPP and the NDC obtained 137 seats apiece, many are saying that a vote by the people in SALL would break the cliffhanger.
However, the Jean Mensa EC says it is not in a position to create a constituency for them because the process would need laying a CI in Parliament that would take 21 days to mature. And such CI will need a two-thirds majority to pass. With Parliament hung, it is not clear if the CI would pass, creating a constitutional crisis.
It will mean that by the actions of Jean Mensa and the EC, the people of SALL had been deliberately disenfranchised.
” We want to repeat that Hohoe Constituency is a creature of statute and not created by mere words or directive of the Electoral Commission
“That whatever election happened in Hohoe Constituency on December 7 to elect John Peter Amewu is null and void and of no effect,” the petitioners wrote.