Female assembly aspirants urged not to withdraw

Cape Coast, May 14, GNA – Female aspirants of the postponed District Level Elections (DLE) have been counselled not to withdraw from the race when the Electoral Commission (EC) reopens the process for fresh nominations to take place.

Mrs Victoria Araba Dennis, the Executive Director of African Women International (AFWI), a Non-Governmental Organisation, said some of the reasons the women cited for withdrawing were due to the long delay, as a result of the Supreme Court order and the lack of financial support.

Mrs Dennis urged them to see the postponement of the elections as an opportunity to re-strategize.

The DLE was scheduled to take place on Tuesday, March 3, but the Supreme Court ordered the EC to suspend the elections and directed the EC ‘to prepare a new legislation to be passed by Parliament before fresh nominations take place for the elections’.

As a result of this directive, the EC proposed July, 2015 for the conduct of the elections.

Available information at the Commission reveals that before the elections were cancelled only 4,379 female candidates were set to contest as against 15,148 male contestants.

Mrs Dennis made this known to the GNA on the sidelines of a three-day capacity building workshop organised by AFWI and funded by Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) at Abura Dunkwa, in the Abura-Asebu-Kwamankese District of the Central Region.

The workshop dubbed: ‘Leadership development for inclusion and participation of women in local political governance’, was aimed at training women on the local government system, community mobilization, assertive communication, leadership and networking.

Participants made up of about 60 women of diverse religious, political and traditional backgrounds, drawn from the district, were taken through topics such as ‘Human Rights and Gender Advocacy’ and ‘Policy Formulation’.

They also discussed the basics of ‘Lobbying’, ‘Proposal Development and Fundraising’, ‘Strategy Development’, ‘Building Alliance and Team’, ‘Communication and Personality Branding’.

Mrs Dennis said women were endowed with many skills, which when developed, could be of great benefit to the country and stressed the need to build their capacity to take leadership positions in governance at all levels.

GNA


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