NCCE to organise debate for flagbearers, parliamentary candidates next year

The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), as part of its outlined programmes for next year, will organise a debate for flag bearers of contesting political parties and Parliamentary candidates ahead of the 2024 General election.

Madam Kathleen Addy, the Chairperson of the Commission, said the debate would enable the flag bearers and independent candidates to communicate their policies and programmes to the citizenry, while Parliamentary candidates would also get platforms to interact with electorates in their constituencies.

“Apart from these, the debate will also serve as a tension breaker. Because whilst political party candidates may create different platforms for their campaigns, this common platform will let them come together and show to the people that, look, we are not enemies, we are just competing candidates at an election,” she added.

Madam Addy said this when a delegation from the United Nations (UN) office in Ghana paid a courtesy call to the Commission to address issues of elections and security.

An inter-party dialogue committee, she said, had been set up at what was called “buffer zones” for conflict resolution at the grassroots levels in every constituency.

“The committees hold meetings at the grassroots levels to see how things that could escalate probably into conflict be nipped in the bud,” she stated.

The Chairperson appealed for financial and logistical support to enable it to undertake educational activities across the country towards the election.

The activities were necessary, she said, to draw the attention of politicians to be mindful of their utterances in order not to create tension among the citizenry, especially the youth.

The Commission was also creating platforms for youth interactions through political party youth activist workshops, she said, explaining “We call it workshop because it serves as capacity building for them to understand the roles of engagement in the political space, for example going on political procession and demonstration and they need to understand the regulations.”

“We also have in-school clubs for young persons and we use such platforms for engagement,” she added.

A critical issue for the Commission for the next year’s election, which was becoming central this time, she said was “religion” and “religion intolerance”, hence the Commission would organise inter-faith dialogue platforms to address and control it.

“In addition to that, we will be holding processions between people of different faiths coming together to preach the message of peace and have fun games with people from different religious groupings.

“So that we can really show to the people that in Ghana, we have lived peacefully from Islam to Christianity, so the fact that this time around, one candidate is a Christian and the other is a Muslim would not break us apart,” she said.

Madam Angeline Nkwenkam Nguedjeu, Peace and Development Advisor (PDA) from the United Nations (UN) – Ghana, who led the delegation, commended the NCCE for the measures put in place to ensure peace and security in the coming election.

She said their mission was to identify which areas the UN could offer support as it always provided assistance by deploying election observers and gave assurance that the information gathered would be submitted to the principals of the UN for their response.

Other members of the delegation were Dr Mathias Awonnatey, UN-Ghana, Manus Macatteu, UN-DPPA, and Ms Ecoma Alaga, Senior Political Affairs Officer/West Africa Team Lead of the UN.