District Level Election Should Be Non-Partisan - Minister

Mr Kweku Ricketts Hagan, the Member of Parliament for Cape Coast South, has said Ghana’s democracy was not matured enough to allow candidates to contest District Level elections(DLE) on the tickets of political parties.

He said Ghana was still in the learning process as far as democracy and politics were concerned and many things were still needed to be understood and taken into consideration before DLE were made partisan.

Mr. Hagan said this during a party he organized for National Democratic Congress (NDC) executives in the Cape Coast South constituency.

“Our democracy is young, there are a lot of things we have not understood as a nation……when someone from NPP or NDC says or does something good, it is always bad in the eyes of the opponents….That is what is killing us. But I believe with time, our politics would mature,” he said.

Mr Hagan said assembly members would be serving the interest of their political parties if they contested the election on party tickets, adding that party politics should be kept from DLE so that the ultimate aim of going to the assembly would be to serve Ghana and not any political party.

He said district assembly structures offered equal opportunity and it was necessary to maintain it to ensure grassroots participation at the local level.

Mr. Hagan, the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, said party politics at the national level had been a bane to several development projects and created division and enmity among many Ghanaians.

He appealed to Ghanaians to desist from unhealthy politics and that it was only political tolerance that would bring the development that the nation required.