General Secretary of the National Democratic Party (NDP), Alhaji Mohammed Frimpong has said that no amount of intimidation and name-calling will deter smaller political parties from contributing to electoral reforms at the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meetings.

Speaking to the press, Wednesday, May 26, Alhaji Frimpong said, “Indeed, any impediments to widening the frontiers of participation of the citizenry and other political parties in our democracy will not be accepted in this era of demand for national accountability”.

According to Alhaji Frimpong, the NDC has been utilising the voice of smaller political parties to achieve its agenda. As such, it cannot turn round to question the participation of these same parties in the decision making process when it comes to elections in Ghana.

“Today, the NDC is calling us worthless, but it forgets that it pulls its own arch-rival political parties as part of its voice. What has changed now?” he queried.

Alhaji Frimpong noted that participation of other political parties who do not have representation in Parliament in the democratic process has been and continues to be beneficial in nurturing Ghana’s multi-party democracy.

His comment comes after the National Democratic Congress (NDC), at a news conference last week, questioned the propriety of the smaller political parties being allowed to contribute to discussions on the proposed electoral reforms announced by the Electoral Commission (EC) ahead of the 2024 polls.

The NDC Director of Elections, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, said, “NDC has one vote and all those smaller parties have one vote each, does this make sense? When we go to IPAC meetings, our party’s presence and input do not make any difference because it does not matter how sane and sound our arguments are, if you just mobilise those people and ask them to vote, the Akua Donkor’s of this world will shout Yeah Yeah. This is a sham.”

Meanwhile, some minority political parties have demanded an apology from the NDC over the ‘derogatory’ remarks. According to them, they have the same voting rights as the political parties with representation in Parliament during Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meetings and that cannot be denied them.

The parties have described the assertion by Afriyie Ankrah as insulting as far as representation in governance is concerned.