The Electoral Commission (EC) has opened nominations for the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections.
In response to COVID-19 protocols, however, the Commission says it has made nomination forms available to all political parties as well as independent candidates on its website
The nominations are to be filed from Monday 5th to Friday 9th October 2020, with a filing fee of GHS100,000 for presidential candidates and GHS10,000 parliamentary candidates.
These filing fees are to be paid in banker’s draft.
“This year’s nominations will be different from previous nominations. As you are all aware, we are operating in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the commission has introduced a number of measures to reduce human contact and human traffic and its activities and operations to a large extent. Our commitment to promote and undertake a COVID-19 free election has largely informed and influenced the changes we have made to our activities and the nomination process is not left out,” Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Jean Mensa stated.
Candidates can only access the forms via unique passwords to be provided to General Secretaries of the various political parties.
Independent candidates can, however, access THE passwords from the IT department of the Commission through their representatives.
The EC chair indicated that the nomination forms will only be received between 9:00 am and 12:00 noon and 2:00 pm and 5:00 pm each day during the stipulated times.
All aspirants have also been directed to submit their forms in quadruplicates.
Presidential nomination forms are to be submitted to the Chairperson of the EC who is the Returning Officer for the Presidential Election at the headquarters of the Electoral Commission by the candidates or their supporters.
For all parliamentary aspirants, they are also to present their forms to the Returning Officers of the constituencies to which the candidate is seeking election at the district office of the Commission by the candidate or his or her proposer or seconder.
In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commission has limited the number of persons to submit the headquarters of district offices to five persons per political party.
