Political Parties in Northern Region to discourage minors from voting

The Tamale-based Civic Campaigns Report Council (MCC Report Council), has expressed the hope that political parties in the Northern Region would lead the campaign to discourage minors from voting in the December 7 general election.

Voting of minors in Election 2012 has become an issue of national security concern and could be the bane of peaceful elections in the region known to harbour a number of electoral flashpoints

Mr Sanah Spokesperson of MCC Report Council, a project of Northern Ghana Aid (NOGAID), a civil society organisation, made this known to journalists after an extra ordinary meeting of the Council in Tamale.

The meeting was a follow up of a dialogue with the political parties on the issue and a recent interaction of members of the 13-member MCC Report Council in Accra with Dr Kwadjo Afari-Djan, Electoral Commissioner.

“I am happy to announce that all the parties in the Northern Region have agreed to lead the campaign to clean the voters register,” Mr Sanah also the Executive Chairman of NOGAID said.

The MCC Report Council is under NOGAID’s Northern Region 2012 Multi-Party Democratic Governance Support Project, which aims at deepening democratic discourse in the region by supporting political parties and the media to focus their activities on issues to minimise violence and conflicts.

The project deals with key stakeholders on topical issues and evaluates the political temperature in the region through early warning signals.

The project funded by STAR Ghana through DANIDA, EU, UKaid and USAID had trained political parties and media houses in the region on good professional practices and had deployed campaign observers in the area to monitor the activities of the political parties to conform with the 2012 Political Parties Code of Conduct.