KNUST Campus
Chairman of the Student Representative Council’s (SRC) Electoral Commission (EC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Mr. Awuah N. Akwasi Friday gave aspirants who have resorted to pasting campaign posters at unauthorized places on campus up to Monday, 21st January 2019 to remove all posters or they will be fined a huge sum of money.
Clarifying some controversies around an earlier release by the Electoral Commission asking aspirants for various leadership portfolios in KNUST not to litter the campus with campaign posters, Public Relations Officer, Maxwell Asante Dankwa who spoke on behalf of the EC chairman on Focus FM, said last year’s electoral offenses have given rise to some what stringent approach on the part of the EC to ensure that there is adherent to all the regulations therein.
According to him, the SRC’s Electoral commission is keen on seeing what it says should be a level electoral playing field and fair to the system and students that they adhere to rules and regulations they are going to work with once they assume office.
“Inline with what our earlier release said, we’ll like to make it clear that we are given an ultimatum to those who have run afoul of the law to undo the damage. Aspirants who has been able to paste his or her material at any unauthorized place on campus has to basically go and take it off by 21st January. Failure to do so will attract a penalty in the form of fine. Those who refuse to pay the money will be disqualified automatically,” he said.
Among the EC’s demands is that aspirants can only paste on Notice Boards after they’ve been granted permission from various Hall and College Executives.
Numerous students who have since declared their intentions to contest for various student level positions in KNUST ahead of the 2019 campus elections have adamantly refused to give in to the university’s rule of running a ‘paperless system’ of information dissemination.
Maxwell Darkwah indicated that the immediate action taken by the EC was necessitated due to the severity of the trend observed so far.
“After we resumed from the Christmas break to write the end of first semester exams, we have observed that there has been proliferation of materials on campus and this is obviously to forward political ambitions. This trend we find very upsetting and we want to put a stop to it,” he stated.
The EC is charging all aspirants and stakeholders of the electoral process to do what is right and be adherent to the rules of the process since they’re all role models people look up to.
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