Four incumbent members of the 31 Wa Municipal Assembly have lost their seats in the district-level elections, including the only female elected member of the Assembly.
Another female, Sarah Faatah, who aspired to join her as an elected member of the Kambali Electoral Area, lost to the incumbent Adam Mashahudu.
JoyNews Upper West Regional correspondent Rafiq Salam reports that, although the voting was relatively peaceful, the turnout was low.
District assembly elections have witnessed low voter turnout since they started in 1988. It is therefore not surprising that this year was no different.
District-level elections are one of the most important polls for participatory democracy in Ghana.
It can be traced back to the colonial era when local authorities were created for specific geographical jurisdictions that became part of the indirect rule system of governance introduced by the British in 1878.
The voter turnout in 1988 for the first district election was 59.3%, but since then, it has reduced substantially. In 1994, voter turnout was 29.3%; in 1998, 41.6%; in 2002, 33.1%, in 2006, 39.3%; in 2010, 35.3%; it was 35.9% in 2015, and in the last district-level election in 2019, the voter turnout was 33.6%.
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