The African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs believes future general elections could result in higher attrition rates in Ghana’s Parliament unless Members of Parliament pursue the interests of their constituents.
In the centre’s view, the increased number of relatively short-term serving legislators could be blamed on the perception that some MPs decide to service personal and party interests at the expense of their constituents.
There are 125 new MPs with Ashanti Region recording the highest number of new legislators (25). The Greater Accra Region (18) and Central Region (16).
But in a Citi News interiew, the Director of the African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs, Dr. Rashid Dramani, indicated that the situation could improve if MPs work to meet the expectation of voters.
“If we our parliamentarians going into the house and doing the bidding of their people then we will have a lot of them stay long in the House. But if they go and do the bidding of the parties and partisan allegiances then this is an unavoidable outcome.”
According to a study by the African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs, 52 percent of citizens believe the role of a parliamentarian is to attend to the problems of their constituents to ensure their problems are solved with “proper representation.”
In this light, Mr. Dramani advised MPs that “whatever record of your vote should be tilted towards the interests of the people who sent you to parliament and not the interests of the NPP or NDC or whichever party.”
“Until we have that, we are going to continue to see a lot of the electoral casualties,” he concluded.
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