Moves to increase Ghana's constituencies from 230 to 275 appear to have been bedeviled by controversy. While the Subsidiary Legislation Committee of Parliament has recommended to the House to reject the Constitutional Instrument (C.I 73) which has been placed before it for the creation of the new constituencies, Members of Parliament on the Majority side think the attempt is being headed by the Minority to scuttle the plan. However, Mr Dominic Nitiwul, the Member of Parliament for Bimbilla and member of the Minority, debunked the claim in an interview with JOY FM in Accra yesterday and indicated that the Minority meant no mischief. He said concerns about the CI had been raised just to make sure that whatever legislation was put in place did not disenfranchise the people. He said, Parliament, by the 1992 Constitution had no authority to alter any part of Legislative and Constitutional Instruments presented to the House. “Either Parliament will annul it or the sponsors of the CI or LI will withdraw it,” he said, adding that “nobody in this world is against creating constituencies…but the law of Ghana has to be respected and so let’s all respect the law. If the law is that we should not disenfranchise any constituency, let’s not disenfranchise it.” Mr Nitiwul said if those constituencies were not captured in the CI then “by law they do not exist and, therefore, cannot vote”. Mr Nitiwul wondered why the Majority was in a haste to push the CI through, stating that “if they had listened to the Minority a long time ago…all these problems will not ensue”. Responding, Mr Dominic Azumah, the Minister of State at the Presidency and Member of Parliament for Garu Tempane, said the CI on the new constituencies would be accepted. Mr Azumah, who is also a member of the Local Government Committee in Parliament, conceded that there were errors and inconsistencies in the document but indicated that there were remedies to the issues. Mr Azumah explained that some of the areas which were omitted, as well as typographical errors, had been brought to the attention of the Electoral Commission. He said due to the crucial nature of the document, “we are going to let the CI 73 to go through. CI 73 will go through”. Mr Azumah gave an assurance that the errors in the current CI would be amended immediately it matured on Thursday. The committee in its report said “the passage of this instrument in its current state will result in a myriad of legal challenges, conflicts and disenfranchisement of registered voters and potentially disturb the peace of the electoral process and of the nation”. In the report signed by its Chairman, Mr Kwame Osei-Prempeh, the committee said there were problems associated with the instrument and concluded that candidates whose electoral areas had been omitted from the CI 73 might not been able to contest the December 2012 general election. The committee, therefore, recommended to the House to adopt its report and annul the Representation of the People (Parliamentary Constituencies) Instrument, 2012 (C.I 73) in accordance with Article 11 (7) of the Constitution. During its discussions, the committee observed that there was swapping of electoral areas in some constituencies. For example, in the Asutifi South and Asutifi North constituencies, all the electoral areas in the south had now been assigned to the north and vice versa while in the Abuakwa South and Abuakwa North constituencies in the Eastern Region, the headquarters of the two constituencies had been swapped. The new constituency headquarters of Abuakwa South is Kukurantumi, while Kibi in Abuakwa South is now the headquarters of the Abuakwa North Constituency. The committee further observed that in the Mion Constituency in the Northern Region, nine electoral areas where the EC conducted the biometric registration and also supervised primaries of political parties had been ceded to the Yendi Constituency, thereby rendering candidates who either resided or hailed from Mion unqualified to contest elections in the constituency. In Tema, the two existing constituencies of Tema East and Tema West had been fused to create an additional constituency bringing the number of constituencies to three but the creation of the new constituencies had placed almost all electoral areas where the candidates hail from under one of the constituencies. Again, the committee observed that the creation of new constituencies had resulted in traditional challenges in some areas such as the Ejisu/Juaben Constituency which had been split into Ejisu and Juaben constituencies. In that case, four main towns which are electoral areas under the Ejisu Paramountcy in the Ejisu Constituency have been placed under the Juaben Constituency, thereby creating tension between the two traditional areas. The committee after due consideration of the CI alongside petitions received by some Members of Parliament, has itemised all corrections that need to be made to the CI to satisfy the purpose for which the constituencies are being created. The report stated, however, that the committee was unable to incorporate the numerous errors, omissions and misplacements of the electoral areas in the instrument in the light of the provisions of Article 11 (7) of the Constitution and the recent decisions of the Supreme Court.