Mr Amadu Sulley, a Deputy Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC) on Tuesday bemoaned voter apathy during District Level Elections (DLE) in Ghana since the country accepted constitutional rule.
He called on relevant stakeholders in the country�s electoral process to create adequate awareness in the run up to the District Level Election to increase voter turnout.
Mr sulley observed that over the years, turn out at the District Level Elections have been extremely low sometimes due to the level of seriousness electorates attached to the election.
He indicated that unlike the Presidential and Parliamentary elections where there was 80.1 per cent turnout in the last election, the DLE in 2010 had a turnout of 35.27 per cent and described it as appalling.
The Deputy Chairman of the EC who is also responsible for the Upper East Region was speaking at a Regional Consultative Forum on Public Election Regulation Constitutional Instrument C.I. 75 organized by the Electoral Commission and facilitated by KAB Governance Consult in Bolgatanga.
The forum afforded stakeholders including Political Party representatives, the Security, Traditional leaders, the media and Civil Society Organizations to deliberate on the way forward in the conduct of the DLE.
Mr Sulley indicated that the highest turn out recorded at the District Level Election was 59 per cent in 1988 when the District Assembly Elections were conducted under unconstitutional rule, and said in 1998 a 41.6 per cent turnout was representing the highest figure since constitutional rule.
Touching on the modifications introduced as a result of C.I. 75 which governs public elections in the country, he noted that C.I. 15 was used before the 2012 presidential and parliamentary election and was replaced by C.I. 75, which came with the introduction of the biometric registration and verification.
He said C.I. 75 empowers the EC as an Election Management Body to make certain modifications to provisions in the DLE which makes these elections different from the presidential and parliament elections.
�For instance, candidates contest in district level elections on their individual merits and not on the ticket of a political party� he said, cautioning that it is an offence for a candidate to contest using resources from a political party. This, he said may lead to the cancellation of their candidature and the offending political party liable to a fine.
He said with the modifications, candidates would be allowed to do door to door campaigns, while the EC would be mandated to create platforms for candidates to present their programmes for electorates to make informed choices.
�The modification provides non-political organizations to give the EC support to create a level playing field for individual candidates in the DLE� he added, indicating that when the voters register is reopened for revision, the EC anticipates a challenge of persons having to register more than once due to ignorance or criminal intent.
On the identification and verification of voters, Mr Sulley said verification was a process and not an event, calling on stakeholders to take a second look at the �No verification, No vote� rule where eligible voters are denied the right to exercise their franchise based on just the Biometric Verification Device (BVD) failing to pick up the finger print of the voter.
He said to check the frequent breakdown of BVD at election centres as experienced at the last elections, the EC was going to increase the number of devices from 33,000 as used in the 2012 election to 70,000 with every centre allocated a backup device.
Mr James Arthur-Yeboah, Upper East Regional Director of the EC, speaking on the challenges from the 2012 general election point, said there were 1,141 polling stations and 353 electoral areas in the Upper East Region and indicated that challenges encountered in the 2012 election if not dealt with could emanate entirely going by C.I. 75.
Participants at the forum appealed to the EC to critically look at the �No verification, No vote� rule that was used in the conduct of the last elections to ensure that eligible voters were not disenfranchised.
They also called on the EC to reconsider the caliber of personnel they recruited during elections to prevent the numerous anomalies that were identified during the Supreme Court Verdict in the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections.
Source: GNA
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