Publish timelines for District Assembly Elections — CSOs
The Local Governance and Decentralisation Programme (LOGODEP) is calling on the Electoral Commission (EC) to publish the timelines for the forthcoming district assembly elections.
Advertisement
According to the non-governmental organisation, the EC’s inability to publish clear timelines has generated mixed reactions among civil society organisations, political parties and other stakeholders involved.
The NGO believes that “this is not helping with planned activities and preparations made by civil society organisations (CSOs) geared towards the much-anticipated national activity.”
The EC has postponed the elections many times because of different constraints.
The government has released about GH¢55,455,377.83 for the EC to conduct the district assembly elections but the Commission is yet to officially announce a date for the exercise.
The NGO opines that one of the cardinal points of Ghana’s decentralisation system is the election of an “assembly of law-makers at the local level, (which is) the highest decision-making body in the various MMDAs.”
It argued that “the 1992 Constitution stipulates that these elections are to take place every four years so by the count of figures, this year, 2014, should have its turn after the one held in 2010,” so LOGODEP is urging the Electoral Commission to expedite action on the exercise.
In a related development, the EC has embarked on a special exercise to transfer votes of prospective candidates in the upcoming district assembly elections in electoral areas and units other than where they registered as voters.
