ROPAL Implementations Committee to understudy Senegal’s system

Some members of the Representative of the People’s Amendment Law (ROPAL) Implementations Committee have left Ghana for Senegal, to understudy how the francophone country is successfully implementing external voting regime.

The team, being led by the Chairman of the ROPAL implementation committee and Deputy EC Chair in charge of operation, Dr. Eric Bossman Asare, includes the General Secretary of the NPP, John Boadu.

The team will thereafter engage Ghanaians living in Gambia and Cape Verde as part of the consultative process.

The consultative engagements will see the team spend the next 5 days in the selected African countries.

The committee, which was set up by the Electoral Commission of Ghana to work out the modalities for the full implementation of ROPAL in Ghana following a court ruling for the law to be implemented, has, since its formation, been holding consultative meetings with stakeholders and public fora in all regions of the country to solicit inputs into the operationalization of the law.

As part of the rollout of its mandate, the committee, having held extensive consultations in Ghana, is now set to hold similar exercise with Ghanaians living abroad, and also, to visit some selected countries in Africa and across the globe that are currently implementing similar laws on external voting with the view to learning from best practices.

ROPAA is a law passed by parliament in 2006 that seeks to provide an opportunity for Ghanaians living abroad to participate in the nation’s General Elections.

Since its passage some 13 years ago, not much have been seen from the EC to give full effect to the law until the high court ruling in December 2017, which gave it fresh impetus.

By 3news.com|Ghana