Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By
William Yaw Owusu
Accra, Thursday October 25, 2012.
Dr. Kwesi Aning of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping
Training (KAIPTC) says Ghanaians should not be deluded into thinking the 2012
general elections would go ahead smoothly per the aggressive posture taken by
politicians and their parties.
“Politicians in Ghana are still in the business of
deliberately preaching hatred, busily exploiting ethnicity, regionalism and
religious groups just to win power and we sit here and think that Ghana’s
democratic credentials are intact. The
falsehood and wrong perception of Ghana as a front-runner state is not doing us
any good.”
Dr. Aning was speaking in Accra Tuesday at the 5th
National Human Rights Lectures organised by the Commission on Human
Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) in collaboration with Commonwealth
Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) under the theme: “Ensuring good governance;
protecting the citizen’s rights to vote.”
After the chairperson had explained the rationale
for the lecture, Dr. Aning who was billed to lecture on “Eliminating election-related
violence and civil strife in West Africa,” said he was changing his topic to
‘Managing’ the process because ‘Eliminating’ election-related violence would
not happen in the 2012 contest.
He said “If we allow politicians to plunge this
country into chaos it would take Ghana many years to recover and added that “only
one week of violence would mean 30 years of Foreign Direct Investment that
would not come in.”
He said reports showed that on the whole of the
continent, it was the West African sub-region that had been found to be very
unstable as the region had experienced more democratic obstacles than
democratic growth in recent times.
He said in the sub-region, every single civil war
had started from elections, adding “In 2008, we just managed to scrap through
and we are not learning our lessons. We have to ask ourselves tough counter
questions whether we are doing what is right for this country to survive
democratically.”
He said since the time table for Election 2012 was
made clearer, political actors had stepped up their game of inciting people
against others just for votes.
The security expert said “When they meet the development
partners they speak a different language. When they are in public or on radio
they sing a different tune and when they meet their supporters in secret they
say all sorts of dangerous things including inciting them to attack their
opponents.”
“They do not care about the future of this country
and are prepared to kill to get power. If you use language that threatens the
peace of the country then you are not fit to govern.”
He said the time had come for the political
parties to be compelled to disclose their sources of funding since some used
narcotics drug money to fund their campaigns.
Dr. Aning also charged the Electoral Commission to
ensure that its integrity cannot be “touched” and the security agencies to remain
neutral since any hitch would spell doom for the country.
He also urged ECOWAS to force Ghana to abide by
the protocols it signed towards democracy and good governance.
Dr. Ken Ahorsu, a lecturer at the Legon Centre for
International Affairs and Diplomacy (LECIAD) who touched on the topic: “Challenges
of conflict management during elections in Ghana” said politics would continue
to dominate the lives of the people so long as the country’s economic situation
remained low.
He said once the authorities particularly the
police and the judiciary were not punishing election-related crimes people had become
emboldened to do all sorts of things.
Joseph Whittal, a Deputy Commissioner in charge of
Legal and Administration at CHRAJ who chaired the function said the
commission’s investigations on the election environment had shown that tension
was mounting but the use of foul language had subsided.
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