The fallout between the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the Electoral Commission (EC) has been described by some Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and political parties as a recipe for disaster ahead of or after the 2024 General Elections.
According to the CSOs and political parties, Ghana was losing its peaceful architecture, particularly, in the face of the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) becoming less effectiveness in recent times.
Entities that have expressed concern over the fallout between the NDC and the EC particularly were the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) and Convention People’s Party (CPP).
The General Secretary of the CPP, Nana Yaa Jantuah, said: “I think it is time we dealt with it. I don’t know why the EC is so entrenched, and I don’t know why the NDC is so entrenched… Various efforts have been made to bring the EC and the NDC together. They (NDC) are not there at IPAC, and anytime a decision is taken, they sit on the sideline and condemn it.”
Their concerns follow a concern expressed by Emmanuel Bombande, Executive Director of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, that although the country is blessed with a number of think-tanks, the EC is not utilising them in mediation, as it was in the days of Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan, the Commission’s former Chair.
Bombande was speaking as part of the discussants at a national forum on trending conflict issues in Ghana, organised under the theme: ‘Trending conflict in Ghana, fertile grounds for violence extremism’ by the National Catholic Secretariat in Accra yesterday.
According to him, the role of mediation in election had drastically reduced, and therefore, election related processes have more tension than before.
“Let watch it. It is sad that in 2020 over a simple matter as a birth certificate becoming an identity document, we would have to go to the Supreme Court.
Now, you know that when you go to the Supreme Court, court decisions are a winner and a loser with respect to our Supreme Court justice retired who is with us, and when a decision is made it is made… The expectation is that [with] the rule of law, we all accept the verdict.”
Mr. Bombande added that in the instances where those who lost in electoral dispute are not fully convinced by the court’s judgment, they would go home to radicalise themselves as extremists, asking rhetorically: “So are we surprised [with the number of] people killed in the 2020 elections?”
He urged that if the EC was not willing to go back to its roots, the National Peace Council should be used as the conveyor belt between it and the political parties, in order to address issues emerging as controversies and competition among political parties, as the country prepares for another election.
The security expert indicated that the very recent statement made by Prof Ken Attafuah that the National Identification Authority was ready to merge the Ghana Card with the voter identification card should not be a matter that should send the country into disarray.
“So when we get there will be no issues, but if we push it forward as a policy, it will be a dangerous ground to radicalise people who feel that they will lose, because if they go to the court and the court rules against them, then they will go to the streets and fight,” he cautioned.
