Supreme Court Declares Delegate-Based Candidate Selection by Political Parties Unconstitutional

Merton & Everett LLP is honoured to announce that on Wednesday, 29 July 2026, the Supreme Court of Ghana delivered judgment in favour of our clients, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, Dr Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe and Dr Christine Amoako-Nuamah, in their constitutional challenge to the delegate-based electoral college systems used by political parties to elect their presidential and parliamentary candidates.

By a 5-2 majority, a seven-member panel of the Court, presided over by the Chief Justice, held that confining voting rights in party primaries to selected executives, officeholders and delegates contravenes Article 55(5) of the 1992 Constitution, which requires the internal organisation of every political party to conform to democratic principles. The Court held that every member in good standing of a political party is entitled to participate directly in the election of the party’s presidential and parliamentary candidates, and directed political parties to amend their constitutions and electoral arrangements within one year to adopt a direct “one member, one vote” system. The Electoral Commission has been directed to supervise and ensure compliance. To preserve stability, the Court clarified that the ruling operates prospectively and does not invalidate elections or decisions taken in good faith under the previous arrangements.

History of the suit

The action commenced on 23 January 2026, when the firm filed a writ invoking the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under Articles 2(1) and 130(1) of the Constitution, followed by the Plaintiffs’ Statement of Case filed on 26 January 2026. The suit was brought against the New Patriotic Party, the National Democratic Congress, the Convention People’s Party, the Electoral Commission of Ghana and the Attorney-General.

The Plaintiffs: a renowned cardiothoracic surgeon and former Minister of State; a medical practitioner and former Ambassador; and a distinguished scientist and former Minister for Education and for Lands and Forestry brought the action both in their personal capacities as party members directly affected by the impugned arrangements, and in the public interest. As Lead Counsel Oliver Barker-Vormawor put it,they came to the Court “as senior citizens and longstanding contributors to Ghana’s public and democratic life, and being deeply concerned about the health, integrity, and future of the Republic’s constitutional democracy.”

The core of the Plaintiffs’ case was that the selection of presidential and parliamentary candidates “is not an ordinary internal matter of party administration. It is the gateway through which executive and legislative authority under the Constitution is accessed.” The Plaintiffs contended that the delegate systems of the three parties created “two classes of political citizens within the same party: those whose votes count; and those whose voices are extinguished,” and that under such arrangements ordinary members were confined to “participation in labour, not participation in power” permitted to mobilise, campaign and fundraise, but excluded from the decisive act of selection.

The Plaintiffs argued that the Constitution, read holistically from its Preamble through Articles 1, 17, 33(5), 35(6)(d), 42, 63 and 93, entrenches a conception of democracy grounded in popular sovereignty, political equality, universal adult suffrage and the accountability of leadership to those from whom its mandate derives. On that footing, the Plaintiffs submitted that “the constitutional promise of equality cannot stop at the gates of the party,” and that it would be “conceptually incoherent for the Constitution to require that the President and Members of Parliament be chosen by universal and equal suffrage of the people… yet permit the decisive internal step that determines who may stand for those same offices to be controlled by narrow or exclusionary mechanisms inconsistent with those very principles.”

The submissions drew on the settled jurisprudence of the Supreme Court on universal suffrage, including Apaloo v Electoral Commission, Tehn-Addy v Electoral Commission and Ahumah Ocansey v Electoral Commission, as well as comparative authority from South Africa (Ramakatsa v Magashule; My Vote Counts NPC v Speaker of the National Assembly), Kenya (Mwicigi v IEBC) and the United States (Smith v Allwright; Terry v Adams), together with Ghana’s obligations under Article 25 of the ICCPR and Article 13 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Significance

This judgment is a landmark in Ghana’s constitutional jurisprudence. It affirms that political parties, as the constitutionally recognised vehicles through which citizens access executive and legislative power, are bound by the same democratic values that underpin the Republic itself. For the first time, ordinary card-bearing members of Ghana’s political parties will have a direct voice in choosing who may stand before the national electorate in their name.

We commend our clients for their courage and public-spiritedness in bringing this action, and we thank the Honourable Court for its careful consideration of the issues.