Politics

EC incurs wrath of potential assembly members

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Some aspirants of the district level elections, initially scheduled to take place today, are counting their losses owing to the unceremonious postponement of the elections by the Electoral Commission(EC). The commission was compelled to reschedule the election in eight out of ten regions in the country due to its failure to complete the distribution of electoral materials. Election was only conducted in the Central and Upper West Regions on Tuesday with low voter turn-out in some polling centres monitored by Joy News correspondents. “[On] the 29th of December we [the EC] will have elections in the Ashanti Region, in the Greater Accra Region, Brong Ahafo Region, Northern Region, the Volta Region and the Upper East region and then on Thursday 30th December, voting will take place in the Eastern and Western Regions," the commission’s Public Relations Officer, Christian Owusu Parry announced the new dates to Joy News late Monday after assuring earlier that all been set for elections to come off Tuesday. Even prior to the reschedule there had been pressure on the EC to consider postponing the election till after December. A governance think tank, Centre for Democracy Development, Ghana, cited ill preparation on the part of the EC for its call but the commission was adamant. Meanwhile some aspirants across the country have been expressing their frustrations to Joy News at the turn of events. Some of them said the latest development had disrupted their thought-out strategies, and feared that it would cause their defeat. Others say it will bring extra burden and cost to them. One of the aspirants told Joy News: “I have done all the arrangements I am supposed to do and I know today is the last day, in fact, I have never seen such shock before, I have to go back to do all sort of things to convince my people otherwise they won’t come and vote so it has given me another cost. Because the people are going to work tomorrow, how can they come and vote?” A woman aspirant noted: “I had to get this information on the radio stations yesterday and it was late for me to get to other people to inform my people. People still went to the polling stations this morning to mount tables for the thing to start just to know that it was not coming on. “I think the EC, the government and all the parties involved are not paying much attention to this district level election.” She said the lackadaisical attitude of the EC towards the district election has made the position unappealing to attract the “right caliber of people” to put up themselves for election. Story by Isaac Essel/myjoyonline.com/Ghana

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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.