Assembly Elections December 28... MMDCEs to hold the fort

THE Electoral Commission (EC) has fixed December 28, 2010 as the substantive date for the district level elections.
However, to address the vacuum that will be created between the end of this month when the term of the current assemblies end and December 28, 2010, when the new assemblies will be elected, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Joseph Yieleh Chireh, says the district chief executives and their chief directors will hold the fort.
He said should there be any emergency, the President would use his powers as the Chief Executive to address them.
Initially the EC set October 23, 2010 as the date for the election of new assembly members, but had to postpone it because the Legislative Instrument (LI) amending the new law had not been passed.
But the EC Chairman, Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan, expressed optimism that Parliament had already acted on part of the legislation and would approve the remaining legislation for a smooth take-off of the election.
Briefing the media at the launch of an awareness programme for the 2010 district level elections in Accra today, Dr Afari-Gyan said the LI 1967 replaced LI 1589.
He said the changes had become necessary because since the district assembly concept was introduced in 1988, there had been an increase in national population, development of new settlements and increment in the number of administrative districts from 110 to 170.
He explained that the EC, in collaboration with stakeholders, carried out re-demarcation and alignment of electoral areas to create new electoral areas, breaking up of existing large electoral areas and merging contiguous ones.
As a result of the re-demarcation and alignment, the number of electoral areas will go up from 5,000 currently to about 6,000 and the number of unit committees will reduce by 9,000 from 15,000 to 6,000.
Also membership of the unit committees will reduce by 195,000 from 225,000 to 30,000.
The new law will also allow candidates to mount their own platforms, ensure that other organisations, apart from political parties, can make resources available to the EC for the purpose of mounting platforms for the common use of all the affected candidates.
Dr. Afari Gyan said the changes were expected to make the elections more manageable and their delivery efficient, especially in the printing of ballot papers which had always been problematic.
He explained that instead of 15,000 different slates of candidates, there would now be 6,000 slates for candidates.
He said the EC had completed the limited voter-registration while other in-house preparations towards the district level elections were in progress.
AS