Ghana - no change in election date after all

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My last post on Ghana was about a proposed constitutional amendment to change the upcoming presidential election date from December to November, and to fix it permanently in November via a constitutional amendment.

The vote for the constitutional amendment did not pass the Parliament. It required a 2/3 vote, 184/275, and only 125 voted for the change. The NPP, the main opposition party, withdrew its support, saying that the process would take too long and would shorten the campaign period before the election.

Reducing the campaign period may have been the goal of the incumbent party, the NDC, according to Kwasi Prempeh. The country has various problems that the opposition party could highlight during the campaign, and moving the election forward a month would reduce the time available to make that case.

(A smaller opposition party, on the other hand - Nkrumah's resurrected CPP - said it was ready for the election to be held in November.)

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