Dan Botwe denies calling for withdrawal of referendum

Dan Kwaku Botwe, Member of Parliament for Okere and Minister for Regional Re-organization and Development, has said he has not called for cancelation of the upcoming referendum as some media reports claim.

Speaking with the Ghana News Agency he said, to rather postpone the referendum and schedule for another time would be expensive, so it was far better now or never and stressed that “I am all for the referendum to be held on December 17, as scheduled”.

He said the referendum to decide whether the election of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs), as well as the District level Elections (DLE), should be on party lines would deepen Ghana’s democracy.

He said calls for postponing the referendum would rather be more expensive to the nation adding that “once it is part of the assembly elections, the cost would be minimized since the same processes and procedures would be used”.

The astute politician said calls for the referendum to be postponed to enable a wider stakeholder consultation was not too strong adding that “if we postponed the referendum whiles the DLE goes on, it means whenever we fix the new date, it will be a stand alone election and would be more expensive”.

He called on the public to go all out on December 17 and exercise their franchise in the assembly and unit committee as well as the referendum to ensure that the President’s intention becomes a reality.