WOMEN who are contesting the December 28 district level elections in the Northern Region have been given a rare opportunity to mount campaign platforms to canvass for votes.
This is part of a project being implemented by the Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA), a non-governmental organisation, with support from GV/DANIDA.
The ‘democracy platform’ project seeks to support women aspiring to participate in local governance by organising community durbars to create the platform for them to announce their candidature to the chiefs and people to seek their support.
Although the project is specifically designed to empower females to participate in local governance, male competitors are also given the opportunity to campaign on these platforms. This is to ensure that both male and females have equal opportunities to campaign and also create a harmonious relationship among the candidates.
The GDCA organised one of such forums in the Tali electoral area in the Tolon/Kumbungu district, during which three aspirants read their messages to the people.
The candidates, a female and two males, were Abiba Sulemana, Abdallah Ibrahim and Ibrahim Abdul-Rahim, respectively.
All three candidates indicated their resolve to put pressure on the assembly to address the challenges affecting the community, notably in the areas of water and sanitation, agriculture, rural enterprise and roads, if elected into office.
They also pledged to support whoever was elected to the assembly to enable the person to fight for the interest of all persons in the community. The Gender Field Officer for the GDCA, Madam Mariam Adam Kadiri, appealed to the people to stop discriminating against women who wanted to be leaders.
According to her, women were very resourceful and hardworking and that, when elected into any governance position, they were able to push hard and bring the needed development to their communities.
The administrator of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) in the Tolon/Kumbungu district, Mr Alhassan Abukari, educated the people on the changes made to the laws backing district level elections.
He said, initially, candidates for assembly elections were not allowed to hold campaign platforms, but that was not the case under the revised law. Mr Abukari urged the people not to demand money from aspirants since that would discourage them from contesting.
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