CCJP for informed electoral choices
The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) says it will take time for the country’s democracy to deepen if the electorate does not make informed decisions when electing leaders.
CCJP secretary for Blantyre Archidiocese, Joseph Kampango said this last week after visiting Neno and Thyolo districts where they were training their electoral monitors.
“In this training,” he said, “we are drilling our monitors to go all out to provide civic education to the electorate on issue-based campaign and also to challenge them to question the leadership choices they make.”
He added that through the one-year civic education project which is being funded by the Norwegian ChurchAid, one of the critical issues they will do is to connect electorates to the aspiring candidates.
“We will have public debates, some of them aired on Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS) and Radio Maria Malawi, where aspiring candidates will face the electorate and explain to them their manifestos. We are doing this to make sure that the electorate is making informed decisions,” he said.
Apart from aiming at high participation in elections by informed citizens, the project, added Kampango, also wants to help increase women participation and candidacy in next year’s Tripartite Elections.
“We will be having continuous training of women aspirants in electoral process and also on how to speak in public. Not only that.
“During the campaign period we have also set aside resources, which will be channelled towards assisting women aspirants with publication of information, education and communication (IEC) materials such as cloth, manifesto publications and other mentoring sessions for female candidates,” he said.
Neno district commissioner Gasten Macheka applauded CCJP for the project and asked women in the district to come and out and get captured by the benefits of the project.
