Ghana’s electoral commission has qualified seven presidential candidates for the national election on December 7. The successful candidates — six representing political parties and one independent — took part in a drawing late Wednesday in the capital, Accra, to determine their positions on the ballot. They will be listed by party affiliation in this order on voters’ ballots: Convention People’s Party (CPP), National Democratic Party (NDP), National Democratic Congress (NDC), Progressive People’s Party (PPP), New Patriotic Party (NPP), People’s National Convention (PNC) and independent (non-party) candidate Jacob Osei Yeboah. The electoral commission earlier had disqualified several candidates for failing to comply with all registration requirements for the election, but those rulings were challenged in court by the PPP and NDP, among others. A court ruling ordered the commission to allow disqualified candidates time to correct errors in their nomination documents.
The process of error correction is now complete, according to electoral commission spokesman Eric Dzakpasu, and it is unlikely any further candidacies will be approved.
“Out of the 10 candidates who resubmitted their nomination papers for reconsideration, three have successfully gone through the process, bringing the total number of candidates for the presidential election to seven. So, just this evening balloting was done, and all the seven candidates now have their positions on the ballot paper for the election,” Dzakpasu said. “… I think the door is now shut … [for] other candidates.”
Full Article: Ghana OKs 7 Candidates for Presidential Election.