At long last, Tuesday, December 19, 2023, is the day for Ghanaians to vote in district-level elections (DLEs) to elect members to the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District assemblies, collectively known as district assemblies.
They are also to elect Unit Committee members for the various electoral areas.
Like the Presidential and Parliamentary elections held in the country, the DLEs are held every four years.
The district assemblies were introduced to allow the people’s participation in governance at the local level and for the assemblies to guide the socio-economic development of their jurisdictions.
We think as others do that the district assembly concept is good as it promotes decentralisation and all its benefits.
Due to the importance of the district assemblies, it is expected that the local people would take keen interest in it and collectively elect community members who can be trusted to spearhead development at the local level.
However, it is clear that such enthusiasm is absent because of certain challenges that must be addressed.
The first and very critical one relates to the eroding of the non-partisan nature of the assemblies.
The idea was that a non-partisan district assembly would help deepen decentralisation, probably because there would not be competing partisan interests and “real men and women” can be elected to the assemblies and unit committees.
Over the years, the assemblies and the DLEs have become overly partisan, though in a tacit manner.
As in recent past, the political parties at the local level are promoting candidates they wish to be elected to indirectly seek their interests at the assemblies.
This defeats the non-partisan nature of the district assembly and brings in some of the ills associated with political party elections such as vote-buying, which has created voter apathy to some extent.
However, even the Electoral Commission (EC) has identified the non-partisan nature of the DLEs as a major factor contributing to the low turnouts in them over the years.
Mr Samuel Guggisberg Asrifi-Young, the Bono Regional Director of the EC, confirmed this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani recently while talking about the EC’s efforts to increase turnout at this year’s DLEs.
In fact, the Chairperson of the EC, Jean Mensa, has said that the EC is targeting at least 60 per cent turnout.
If this happens, it will be a great achievement because it will beat the highest turnout so far, 59.3 per cent in 1988/89.
Meanwhile, the B&FT Online, a portal owned by Business and Financial Times newspaper, yesterday published that if voter turnout in the last three decades of DLEs in Ghana is anything to go by, then it is safe to predict that less than 35 per cent of the voter population will patronise Tuesday’s DLEs.
In fact, an article published in the Journal of Science and Tecnology (Ghana) on November 19, 2014 says a non-partisan district assembly system seems more of an illusion than reality due to the enduring strength of informal ties, heavy politicisation of the district assemblies, numerous challenges confronting the Assembly members.
It recommends that in order to deepen the country’s democracy, the legal framework needs to be revised for competitive partisan DLEs to be pursued and assembly members paid for their work.
We think the circumstances support a partisan District Assembly system and the State must give the suggestion a thought.
