By Patrick Ofoe Nudzi
Accra, July 17, GNA – Mrs Joyce Afutu, Head, Communications and Corporate Affairs, National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), has asked aspiring Assembly and Unit Committee Members to desist from promising capital projects ahead of this year’s District Level Elections.
He said their roles as elected members would be to organise communal labour, collate views and complaints from community members and present them to the Assemblies for redress and urged them to keep to that mandate.
The Electoral Commission has slated October 3 for the District Level Elections, however, yet to announce the processes, including dates for filing of nominations.
The date, according to the Commission, is subject to change depending on the early approval of the Constitutional Instrument (C.I 91) before Parliament.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the campaign promises, Mrs Afutu said Assembly and Unit Committee members should not emulate parliamentarians in making promises for capital projects because they had no common fund for such.
“The reality is that MPs have a common fund, but Assembly members don’t have and don’t have to make those promises. By the time you even enter the Assembly, the development plan has already been made and budgeted for,” she said.
“Some Assembly members make campaign promises, get to the Assemblies and cannot fulfil them,” Mrs Afutu noted, adding that a study on District Level Elections indicated that MPs were seen more as development agents.
Local governance experts said the practice of Assembly member aspirants promising capital projects was due to how apathy had characterised local-level elections over the years.
The first District Level Elections were held in 1988/89, with voter turnout at 59.3 per cent, it was 29.3 per cent in 1994, 41.6 per cent in 2002, 33.1 per cent in 2006, 35.5 per cent in 2010 and 30.6 per cent in 2015.
The elections are expected to take place in all 6, 272 electoral areas and 38,622 polling stations nationwide.
GNA