Qualifications and eligibility of Members of Parliament.

1. A person shall not be qualified to be a candidate for the office of member of Parliament unless –

• He/she is a citizen of Ghana, has attained the age of twenty-one years and is a registered voter;

• He/she is resident in the constituency for which he stands as a candidate for election to Parliament or has resided there, for a total period of not less than five years out of the ten years immediately preceding the election for which he stands or he hails from that constituency;

• He has paid all his taxes or made arrangements satisfactory to the appropriate authority for the payment of his taxes.

(2) A person shall not be qualified to be a Member of Parliament if he –

•  owes allegiance to a country other than Ghana;

•  has been adjudged or otherwise declared –

(i) bankrupt under any law in force in Ghana and has not been discharged; or (ii) to be of sound mind or is detained as a criminal lunatic under any law in force in Ghana; or

• has been convicted –

• has been found by the report of a commission or a committee of inquiry to be incompetent to hold public office or is a person in respect of whom a commission or committee of inquiry has found that while being a public officer he acquired assets unlawfully or defrauded the State

• Is under sentence of death or sentence of imprisonment imposed on him by any court; or

• Is not qualified to be registered as a voter under any law relating to public elections; or

• is otherwise disqualified by a law in force at the time of the coming into force of this Law.

(3) A person shall not be eligible to be a member of Parliament if he –

•  is prohibited from standing election by a law in force in Ghana by reason of his holding or acting in an office the functions of which involve a responsibility for, or connected with, the conduct of an election or a responsibility for the compilation or revision of an electoral registrar; or

•  is a member of the Police Service, the Prisons Service, the Armed Forces, the Judicial Service, the Parliamentary Service, the Statistical Service, the National Fire Service, the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service, the Immigration Service or the Internal Revenue Service; or

• is a chief or

• has not declared his assets in accordance with the provisions of the Public and Political Office Holders (Declaration of Assets and Eligibility) Law, 1992 (P.N.D.C.L.280).

• For the purpose of subsection (2) (d) of this section, in the case of any finding made by a commission or committee of inquiry which is not a judicial or quasi-judicial commission or committee of inquiry, without prejudice to any appeal against or judicial review of that finding, the finding shall not have the effect of disqualifying a person under that subsection unless it has been confirmed by a Government White Paper.

• A person shall not be taken to be disqualified to be a member of Parliament under paragraph (c) or (d) of subsection (2) of this section if – (a) ten years or more have passed since the end of the sentence or the date of the publication of the report of the commission or committee of inquiry; or (b) he has been pardoned