District Assembly polls... Fifty-three assembly aspirants go to school
Fifty-three candidates aspiring to district assembly membership in the Obuasi Municipality and Amansie Central District in the Ashanti Region have attended a day’s workshop on political campaigning at Obuasi.
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The workshop, which was attended by aspirants including women, youth and persons with disability, was organised by the Coalition of Domestic Elections Observers (CODEO) in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Competent people
A secretariat staff member of CODEO, Nana Kwabena Aborampa Mensah, said district assemblies were basic units for development and that there was the need to have competent people who would help develop better principles at the grass roots.
He said the workshop was designed to enhance the capacities of women, the youth and the disabled aspirants so the assemblies could come up with holistic policies that would benefit all the people in the society.
Nana Mensah noted that assembly members were expected to facilitate local development and that they should see themselves as agents of development.
Incumbents
Nana Mensah reminded the participants, some of whom were incumbent assembly members, that they should be transparent in their undertakings and also ensure that they teamed up with the chiefs and other opinion leaders in their communities to enhance local development.
“You should work as a team with the unit committee members, nananom (chiefs) , opinion leaders, ministers of religion and other influential persons,” he said, adding, “Governance is teamwork.”
He advised the aspirants to select competent persons who had knowledge in electoral laws to be their polling agents, in addition to selecting campaign messages that were not antagonistic.
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Participants
The Programmes Co-ordinator of Youth Bridge Foundation and a member of CODEO, Nelson Amo, encouraged the participants to have a critical assessment of themselves and build on their positive qualities for victory.
A participant advised his colleagues to be wary of those they would pick to form their campaign teams since some people could be rather treacherous.