The Africa Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA) has said the inability of smaller parties to win parliamentary seats during last week’s elections will stifle the country’s quest for a multi-party democracy.

Ghana’s parliament has been controlled by the two main parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NPP), since 1992.

The smaller parties could not win seats in parliament after the December 7 polls as the NPP won 170 seats in parliament with the NDC obtaining 103.

The Executive Director of ACEPA, Rasheed Dramani, speaking to Class News, said the situation in the seventh parliament of the Fourth Republic will remain the same as previous years, which is not good for multi-party democracy.

“That’s not quite good, because in a country that has different shades of opinion and interest, there will be some compromises and some give-and-take when it comes to policy making and passing bills and so on. But what we are going to see on January 7 is not different from what we have seen over the years because traditionally, yes, we have had one or two representatives from some other political party but by and large it has been an NDC, NPP affair,” he stated.