Most Reverend Professor Emmanuel Asante
Immediate past Chairman of the Peace Council, Most Reverend Professor Emmanuel Asante, has described as unfortunate attacks on the credibility and neutrality of the Electoral Commission (EC).
He contends he has every cause to believe in the transparency and neutrality of the Electoral Commission per his work with the commission.
He argued: “As far as I am concerned; with the little that I am privileged to know, they are transparent, they are doing the best that they can and I don’t think they are putting anything on the way to rig anything for anybody. It’s not possible that way.
“From my perspective, the EC has been very transparent and have always come out to explain things to the public and I think the media must do its own investigations and find out whether they are telling us the truth or are we to take what the political parties are saying.”
His comments come on the back of the incessant insistence from the opposition National Democratic Congress that the Chair of the Electoral Commission and her deputies are hatching a hidden agenda to rig the elections.
He told reporter Ivan Heathcote–Fumador, such calls are parochial, unfortunate and detrimental to the quest for a peaceful conduct of December’s elections.
He cautioned, “You will always hear political parties doing this because they will have to appeal to their followers, some of whom will not even bother to sit back and find out whether what is being said is true. It can be at the detriment of the country and I wish that they can respect the very country they want to rule.” He made these assertions on the sidelines of the launch of the Peace Summit of the Methodist Diocese in Kumasi.
The event was to draw the minds of the church to the need for political tolerance within the diversity of partisan choices.
The Bishop of the Kumasi Diocese of the Methodist Church of Ghana and Ashanti Region Chair of the Peace Council, Right Rev. Christopher Nyarko Andam, cautioned the media to play active roles in dousing contentions that could spiral into violence among supporters of political parties.
Right Rev. Christopher Nyarko Andam also called on churches to discourage offering their pulpits to politicians whenever they visit their churches to maintain the peaceful coherence of the church. He says the farthest heads of churches can do is “acknowledgement and prayers for the visiting politicians.”