The Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) has launched a report on the assessment of political parties’ manifestos ahead of the December 7 polls.
This forms part of the Centre’s attempts to inform the decisions of the electorate, particularly as regards who to vote for as president in the upcoming elections.
Explaining the processes involved in compiling the report, Director of Advocacy and Public Engagement at CDD-Ghana, Dr Kojo Asante said it involved three main stages which began with agenda-setting, a stage which comprised the very inception of manifesto compilation by parties.
He noted that the report did not only focus on political parties and their manifestos but also what the electorate must look forward to in party manifestos before heading to the polls.
Speaking on the sidelines of the launch, Dr Asante intimated that “this was the second phase so we had already published one where we showed all the issues in 10 sectors and this was taking a few sectors and assessing what the parties had put down in terms of their feasibility and relevance.
“The big issue for some of these places apart from the fact that some of it focused too much on input, is the cost because the economy we have has so many constraints and we already have a debt challenge.
“With regards to promises made by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the impact on the economy, “if they promise all these issues and you look at your resources, it is very difficult to imagine that you’ll be able to do them and after a while people begin to lose interest in the political processes that all these campaign promises don’t mean anything”, Dr Asante observed.
Addressing how the electorate respond to political party manifestos he advised that the citizenry have to understand they can’t get everything since there’s a tradeoff and the report was also part of ‘the Ghana Manifesto Project’ which was launched by the CDD in July this year to enhance the development of manifestos and policies put forth by political parties through the use of credible data and evidence.
-ghanaweb
