We Should Not Tolerate Election Violence In December 2012

There is an urgent need for a special election task force - which will work to ensure violence-free presidential and parliamentary elections, in December 2012.

It ought to have a membership that includes: representatives of the government of the day; all the political parties in Ghana; officials from the Electoral Commission (EC); as well as the leadership of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) and the Ghana Police Service.

That election task force must work closely with all the regional and district security councils, to ensure that effective measures are put in place, to prevent violence during the December 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections.

Above all, the task force must ensure that cases of blatant polling station intimidation, such as those that occurred in parts of the Ashanti Region and the Volta Region, which led to violence in those areas during the December 2008 elections, do not occur in the December 2012 polls.

The media must play a leading role in ensuring a violence-free election in December 2012, by educating the public on the need to be tolerant on the day of the elections - and cooperate with polling station officials from the EC to prevent violence by the usual rented-gang-of-thugs that unscrupulous politicians resort to, when they seek to steal an election.

Furthermore, now that so many ordinary people have mobile phones, would it not make sense for political parties to train polling station election monitors - young well-educated volunteers using the video, camera and text applications/functions of their mobile phones - who will report what occurs at each polling station on the day of the elections to the world, with their citizen-journalist reports uploaded to an online "Ghana elections website"
set up for the purpose?

We must not allow a few selfish politicians to destroy Ghana's hard won reputation as a peaceful and stable African country - and we can all help to prevent that by supporting the setting up of a special election task force, which will ensure that the GAF and the Ghana Police Service deal swiftly and ruthlessly, with all those who engage in acts of violence during the December 2012 elections. A word to the wise...

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