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Mr Eric Adjei, the Deputy Bono Regional Director of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has called on Ministries of Information and the Local Government, Rural Development and Decentralisation to upscale public education for Ghanaians to understand the decentralisation concept.
This would whip their interest and enthusiasm to appreciate and participate in the Tuesday, December 19 District Level Elections (DLEs).
As the DLEs gather momentum, Mr Adjei said the ministries ought to further intensify publicity everywhere for the elections to receive the required voter turnout.
In accordance with the District Level Elections Regulations, 2015 (C.I. 89), the Electoral Commission would conduct the District Level Elections on December 19.
This follows the expiration of the term of the Assembly and Unit Committee Members in December 2023.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani, Mr Adjei indicated that though DLEs remained critical to strengthening the decentralisation process, voter turnouts continued to decline in successive elections.
This is basically because most of the masses still do not understand decentralisation and local government systems and structures well.
Mr Adjei said he was strongly against the politicisation and partisan nature which were gradually eating into the DLEs, saying, “If we allow that to happen, then the local government concept is in danger”.
Meanwhile, the DLEs are picking up in the Sunyani Municipality, with aspiring Assembly Members (AMs) adopting various campaign strategies to reach out to and woo the votes of the electorate.
According to the Electoral Commission (EC), 101 aspirants were contesting the elections to represent 34 electoral areas to represent their respective constituents at the Sunyani Municipal Assembly.
In that regard, some of the aspiring AMs had scaled up their campaigns, resorting to early “morning cries” at various neighbourhoods in the Sunyani to reach out to voters.
Other aspirants said they also believed door-to-door remained an effective campaign strategy, and, therefore, used the approach to propagate their campaign messages to the electorate.
Mr Kingsley Kusi Appiah, an aspiring assemblyman for the Ankobea Electoral Area in the municipality told the GNA that some of the aspirants required support to enable them to reach out to and propagate their messages to the electorate in hard-to-reach communities.
