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Meet your Candidate sessions should be mandatory, STAR-Ghana partner says

Face-to-face interaction between citizens and parliamentary candidates to encourage issue-based voting was a key activity of a STAR-Ghana funded project during the presidential and parliamentary elections.

Socioserve-Ghana’s Promoting Inclusiveness in Elections 2016 project reached five constituencies in the eastern and Volta areas. 

SocioServe group

Meet your Candidate sessions allowed parliamentary candidates to answer questions from constituents, promoting accountability and transparency among political figures.The project recommended that these sessions should be mandatory in future.

The project also brought together political parties, urging them to encourage peaceful actions among their diehard supporters. 

Coming together for peace

For the first time, five chiefs from Tokoroano community came together for a durbar – a traditional Ghanaian welcoming ceremony, involving dancing, music and presentations. The chiefs in this area were known to have had long-running disputes. 

Socioserve-Ghana partnered on the project with the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), which sought to revamp the Inter Party Dialogue Committee (IPDC). This committee comprised of the Electoral Commission, police, political parties, civic groups and youth groups. 

The IPDC prioritised community participation and screened election violence films translated into local languages. A Code of Conduct was formally agreed with communities. These actions helped to peacefully defuse potential conflicts between police and citizens, especially in the Afram Plains.

‘We allowed communities to decide what they wanted to do, and suggested what would bring stakeholders together.’ 
An IPDC representative. 

Elections 2016 grants

STAR-Ghana’s first call for grant proposals supported initiatives promoting peaceful, credible, issue-based and inclusive presidential and parliamentary elections for Ghana in 2016. Out of the 219 organisations that responded to the call, 35 were awarded grants totalling $US2,216,167. 

More about the election 2016 grants.

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