NDC and NPP membership just about six million – IDEG

The Executive Director of the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG), Dr Emmanuel Akwetey has said the membership of Ghana’s two dominant political parties amounts to about just six million.

He said though IDEG could not confirm the total membership of the parties at the present, both the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party said last year when the institute was carrying out the multi-party governance report, that they each had about three million members. The population of Ghana is a little over 25 million.

The Executive Director was reacting to a journalist’s scepticism that a neutral and impartial committee such as IDEG and the Civic Forum Initiative want, could be constituted by the Electoral Commission to resolve the controversy surrounding the voters register.

He called for a departure from the notion that polarization was deeply ingrained to the extent that people with neutral voices cannot be found.

“The fact that you come from a party does not mean you cannot do a professional thing; but at least people should see you as having the credibility and the capacity to do that. It is not a bad thing to belong to a party but you should also rise above that to serve the national interest. It is rabid partisanship that is the problem and usually it is not everybody in the party that has that”, Dr Akwetey said.

By Emmanuel Odonkor