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Voting on ethnicity not a bad thing – Joy FM panelists discuss election 2016

By MyJoyOnline
Politics Voting on ethnicity not a bad thing – Joy FM panelists discuss election 2016
JUL 28, 2016 LISTEN

Although the big influencing factors for voting behavior may include issues and money, a vote on tribal lines should not be condemned as narrow-minded, Joy FM’s Super Morning Show has found out.

A panelist and an entrepreneur Kwabena Owusu Adjei believes it is rational for a voter to vote for a candidate who comes from his own ethnic group.

“I don’t think it is bad that people want the people that represent them, to be from where they are from. That is not necessarily a bad thing”

“It is human nature that you always want the person to represent you to look like you be like you talk like you”.

Demographically, a political party needs to have an ethnic base to be considered viable during elections.

While the NPP maintains control of Akan-speaking areas headquartered in the Ashanti region, the National Democratic Congress NDC relies on the bankable support of the Volta region, where Ewes are the overwhelming ethnic group.

Kwabena believes that voting on ethnic lines becomes problematic when the Ghanaian voter does not see himself as a Ghanaian first above all other considerations.

But if he can see himself as a Ghanaian, it should be seen as permissible if he decides to vote.

“What we have failed to do as a nation is to make more people recognize first as Ghanaians before recognizing themselves as Northerners or Southerners or Ga or Ewes or Ashantis”, he observed.

But two other panelists, Amma Owusu Aboagye and a blogger Ekua Nkyerkyer discount any influence of ethnicity on their votes. They believe ethnicity should play no role in deciding who gets a vote.

“ It is about zero percent. It does not matter to me at all. I can say that with a lot of confidence but I am sure I belong to the minority nationwide” Ekua Nkyerkyer said.

In a research work titled “The Elephant, Umbrella, And Quarrelling Cocks: Disaggregating Partisanship In Ghana’s Fourth Republic”, political scientist Gyimah-Boadi in his analysis of Ghana’s 2000 elections, summarizes the popular sentiment that follows each of the Fourth Republic’s national elections when he notes that ‘the country is polarized along ethnic and regional lines’.

Campaign promises
Ekua Nkyerkyer believes that she places value on realistic campaign promises. In this issue, the NDC in the 2008 general elections promise for a one-time premium was hollow, she indicated

“I will do the numbers and know that you are telling me lies and I will never vote for you,” she said.

She also observed that while the New Patriotic Party (NPP) free senior high school (SHS) policy was good, it was disappointing to see the 2012 NPP flagbearer Nana Akufo Addo could not back it up with how he intends to fund it.

“It sounded like a great idea but if you don’t have the story of how you are going to fund it, I will look at you sideways”, she said.

Amma Owusu Aboagye who works with Innovations for Poverty Action, an NGO, said she noticed that a difference between the NPP and NDC on education is that the opposition NPP focuses on “life-long” post-basic education while the NDC wants to pay attention to basic education.

For her, “we need to get the basics right”, she endorsed what she believes is the NDC education policy.

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com

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