The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) is engaging the services of 260 civic, voters and peace educators to undertake community-level engagements with citizens and educate them on the essence of the upcoming December 17 district assembly elections and the referendum.
Additionally, the coalition would recruit, train and deploy 1,000 election day observers on December 17, 2019 at some selected polling stations in the country.
The Referendum
A ceremony to launch CODEO’s election support interventions and the opening of the workshop for the civic, voter and peace educators in the Greater Accra Region was held on Tuesday, November 5, 2019. The workshop is the last session in the series of training held for the voter and peace educators in 15 out of the 16 regions across the country.
The implementation of CODEO’s interventions is supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and is in collaboration with the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE).
The Chairperson of CODEO, Sheikh Aremeyaw Shaibu, in his address said the district assembly elections were fundamental to the country’s efforts on decentralisation which sought to give citizens more direct control over the local governance and their local development processes.
The objective
In line with its objectives of promoting transparency, credible and participatory electoral processes, Sheikh Shaibu said CODEO was carrying out various interventions to support the December 17, 2019 electoral activities.
Recognising the limited public awareness of the elections, he said CODEO was contributing to enhance citizens understanding on the elections through a variety of mediums, including media campaigns and community-level engagement. He further stated that CODEO’s sole objective for civic education activities in the elections was to boost general voter understanding of issues, as well as participation in the elections.
Apathy
The Chairperson of the NCCE, Ms Josephine Nkrumah, bemoaned the level of apathy during the district-level elections, saying that Ghanaians were more interested in the parliamentary and presidential elections than the district levels.
“This exercise of district-level elections, characteristically, has recorded low voter turnout over the years. And sometimes, despite our best efforts, we haven’t seen the kind of participation and interest that we’ll like to see from citizens.
“It beats my mind because I think this is the most important election for us because that it is the point where every citizen can participate in decision making. It is the point where we can interact with unit committee members, assembly members and actually champion developmental agenda at the district level. Sadly, we don’t see civic interest there,” she bemoaned.
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