A three-day Capacity Building Workshop for parliamentary candidates from 30 selected constituencies has ended in Koforidua.
The workshop, which sought to prepare the candidates for their work as potential Members of Parliament (MPs), was organized by the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) in collaboration with Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) and supported by Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).
The workshop, which drew participants from Volta, Central, Greater Accra and Eastern Regions, was under the theme: "Promoting policy issue based campaign in election 2012".
Mrs Regina Oforiwa Amanfo, Programs Officer, CDD-Ghana, said Ghana would be holding its sixth presidential and parliamentary elections under the fourth republic after five successive and progressive ones which produced two election turnovers.
She said even though the 2008 general elections were touted as generally credible and peaceful by both local and international observers, the process was not without challenges.
"The elections suffered from various political, institutional and technical gaps such as limited political space for discussing policy issues affecting marginalized groups like women, youth and the disabled, mistrust and suspicion among political opponents, political intolerance and insults, intimidation and harassment" she added.
Mrs Amanfo said all those problems needed to be avoided and resolved before the 2012 elections which from all indication would be more competitive.
She said it was against that background that CDD-Ghana in partnership with CODEO over the past years had organized parliamentary debates in selected constituencies to help shift political discourse during campaigns to focus on pertinent issues to avert the challenges that served as threats to the country's democracy.
Mrs Amanfo said this year's parliamentary debates like the previous ones would seek to ease the growing tension in the build up to the upcoming elections by streamlining campaign messages of aspirants to focus on issues affecting the vulnerable groups in the selected constituencies.
She used the platform to appeal to political parties to avoid politics of insults and any form of hate speeches which will affect the peaceful environment in the country.
Participants were taken through topics like, “the constitutional and constituency role of MPs, effective communication and communicating policy ideas and economic and developmental challenges facing Ghana".
Others were governance deficits in Ghana; challenges facing Ghanaian youth: the role of Mps, issues affecting persons with disability; the disability law and its compliance and mainstreaming gender in public life: prospect and challenges.