Sammy Obeng, the Executive Director for the Parliamentary Network Africa has called for the implementation of proper structures to facilitate the engagement between Parliamentarians and their constituents.
The call follows the findings of research by the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana suggesting that about 50% of voters will not vote a second term for their current MPs in the next election.
He has asked MPs to take advantage of their recess periods to visit their constituencies.
“Parliament by their standing orders, ordinarily is supposed to sit from Tuesday to Friday, so that Mondays and weekends are not included unless for extreme period where they are expected, and so I think that these are structures put in place that members of parliament need to be taking due advantage of to make themselves visible in their respective constituency to make their people realize that they are not just in Accra,” he said.
Research conducted by the Political Science department at the University of Ghana has revealed that 49.5 % of Ghanaians surveyed have said they will not vote for their incumbent Member of Parliament citing poor performance and a lack of representation.
42.6% of the respondents were also of the view that their MPs deserve a second chance, 7.9% of the respondents were undecided.
The research also indicated that a majority of the respondents representing 46.7% do not want their incumbent MPs to contest in 2020 general elections.
42.4% want their MPs to contest whiles 10.9% are undecided on whether their MPs should contest or not.
The research also disclosed that at the national level, 87.8% declared their intentions to vote in the upcoming general elections as against 9.7% who said they will not vote if elections were going to be held today.
Some 2.5% of the respondents were undecided.
The respondents were asked to rate the performance of their MPs so far on the scale of ‘Excellent to very bad’ less than half 45.7% were satisfied, the majority, 52.3% were dissatisfied.
