The Ministry of Information (MoI) is partnering the Information Services Department (ISD), to carry out educational campaign on the December 17 referendum on Article 55 (3) in farming and ‘hard-to-reach’ communities in the Ashanti Region.
The exercise, which also covers the impending district level elections (DLEs), is geared towards overcoming voter apathy to ensure successful polls.
Elections at the local level for many years has witnessed considerably low voter turn-out, averaging just around 30 per cent, according to the Electoral Commission (EC).
The ISD, currently, in a bid to improve the situation has deployed a number of its mobile cinema vans across the various districts in the Region, sensitizing those in the hinterlands, farmers and other stakeholders to come out in their numbers for the impending exercises.
“The Department is leveraging on its national footprint and reputation as the authentic voice of government to ensure mass participation for the DLEs and referendum,” Nana Akrasi Sarpong, Ashanti Regional Director of the ISD, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Kumasi.
“Our target is to push for a critical minimum voter turn-out of 40 per cent, and out of this 75 per cent voting ‘Yes’ to effect a constitutional amendment to the Article,” he said.
This was on the sideline of a sensitization forum, to educate participating Muslims at the 55th annual celebration of the Maulid Nabiyi (Birth of the Prophet Mohammed – the founder of Islam), on the impending exercises.
The referendum is to give opportunity to Ghanaians to either endorse or reject a change in the entrenched Article 55.
Nana Akrasi Sarpong said an affirmative endorsement would allow political parties to participate in DLEs, thereby broadening the base of the nation’s democratic dispensation.
“If the referendum is ‘Yes”, Parliament shall approve the Amendment Bill to Article 55 (3),” he noted, adding that the perceived demerits would also be resolved with those consequential amendments and reviews to existing laws.
By Stephen Asante, GNA
