Women’s Manifesto Coalition to monitor polls
The Women’s Manifesto Coalition (WMC) will create a special situation room during the election as part of efforts to ensure peace during and after the election.
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The Special Situation Room will be created throughout the country to monitor the election.
There will be a toll-free line and television sets in the room to monitor the election from voting to counting and declaration of results.
This special concept has been duplicated in some African countries including Nigeria, Kenya, and Liberia to reduce electoral violence, and this year, some eminent women in Ghana want to adopt it to monitor the elections and dialogue among political parties to ensure peace during this year’s election.
The Volta Regional Coordinator for the Women Situation Room, Nana Kugbeadzor–Bakateyi revealed at a workshop organised by the Fredrich Ebert –Stiftung and Abantu for Development last Monday at Dodowa.
Speaking on the topic “Women’s Inclusiveness and Peace in Elections 2016”, Nana Kugbeadzor-Bakateyi stated that some eminent women including Dr Joyce Aryee, Prof. Henrietta Mensah Bonsu, Mrs Joy Abena Nyarko among others and organisations such as the WMC, Abantu for Development and others have signed to it.
To ensure peace
Mrs Kugbeadzor–Bakateyi mentioned that on the day of election, the special situation rooms would be created across the regions which would comprise one eminent woman, representatives of all the political parties, a representative from the Electoral Commission, security personnel, as well as representatives from the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), to respond to issues that would be crop up on the day of election.
“The room would be created for 10 days during the election period which would provide 24-hour within a week services,” she said.
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She noted that there would be toll free lines which would soon be advertised on various media platforms so that individuals could call in case electoral violence occurs somewhere. “The eminent women can respond to the call and if it is from a political party, they would call the leaders of the parties to address it,” she added.
Mrs Kugbeadzor –Bakateyi believed that peace was in the hands of women and some eminent women were ready to lead delegation to address any confrontations that may pop up among parties during the election.
We need more women in Parliament
The Representative from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP), Dr Comfort Asare stated that the ministry had been organising series of empowerment programmes for ladies so that they could pursue higher education in order to get more ladies in Parliament, since women could talk better on issues of women than men.
“Some of us have not been to be part of the decision making process because they are not well educated, so they are pushing for more ladies to have higher education,” she said.
Dr Asare noted that there had been capacity building organised for them to enable them to take decision for themselves, as well as educating them on sustainable development goals in order for them to achieve national gender policy.
She mentioned that the ministry had been advocating on media platforms to educate the electorate on the need for them to vote women into Parliament.
According to her, gender looked at both men and women but considering gender programming; the ministry looks at the sex that was marginalised and in this case, women were marginalised. “It was very bad that Ghana has over 50 per cent women population but in Parliament, women represented 11 per cent and the rest were men,” she added.
She reiterated that this does not reflect on issues of women when it comes to voting on issues of women in Parliament.
Background
The training workshop was to bring together about 40 participants from various geographic zones to create space for empowering women aspirants through skills training and knowledge acquisition on governance and electoral system and processes, as well as to enhance knowledge on frameworks for promoting women’s political participation and inclusiveness.