More than 30 years of multi-party democracy, the country is still groping in the dark to align with the best practices in the world.
For lack of trust, we have introduced some procedures that threaten to kill the beauty of democracy, the key ingredient being tolerant of divergent views. And since political parties are key stakeholders in the effective functioning of a democracy, there is bound to be divergent views.
The political parties would have views about how the Electoral Commission (EC), the election management body, should run the processes. And it is to create a consensus, that the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) was mooted and established but, sometimes, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) would want to hijack the IPAC to its advantage by dictating to the EC, a body regulated by law.
That is why since the advent of the Fourth Republican Constitution, the EC has never enjoyed a very fruitful collaboration from the opposition political parties. For the past eight years, the NDC sees the EC as a stumbling block to its efforts to regain power.
Presently the leadership of the NDC is made up of people like John Mahama who are exposed to global politics and are aware of the independent role of the EC in a democracy.
However, for the sake of politics, the NDC has demolished the EC for every step of the process. Some of the interventions that we have agreed to all clog the process towards a functional democracy where the mere compilation of a voters roll does not degenerate into violence, leading to the shedding of innocent blood.
A case in point is the alleged stabbing of the son of the Member of Parliament (MP) for Awutu Senya East who also doubles as Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, Mrs. Mavis Hawa Koomson, by some hoodlums believed to be members of the opposition NDC.
While John Mahama never misses the opportunity to assure us that it is not worth it for people to lose their lives because the NDC wants to regain power, some hooligans in his party think the party can return to power through intimidation and violence. We are tempted to take John Mahama’s assurance with a pinch of salt because of his own antecedents and utterances.
The NDC flagbearer for elections since 2012 and again for the 2024 polls, John Mahama, has always claimed that violence is the new normal in the NPP. And as it is characteristic of John Mahama to say one thing and do the opposite, his short memory exposes his inconsistency.
A few years ago, John Mahama said categorically that, no party can unleash violence than the NDC, saying that, “We’ll match NPP boot-for-boot.”
Speaking to NDC party supporters in the Volta Region in 2020, John Mahama said, “I want to sound a caution that NDC has a revolutionary root and when it comes to unleashing violence, no one can beat us to that. It is just we midwife this country’s democracy and that is why we must be first to respect it……..” Having made this call to violence to his members, John Mahama is quick to accuse the EC of manipulating the processes to rig the elections in favour of the NPP.
The very provocative pronouncements by the leaders of the NDC have served as a motivation to unleash violence on innocent people who availed themselves of the opportunity to register during the just ended limited registration exercise.
The question is in the simple exercise of registration of voters, do we need the presence of party agents? The presence of party agents per se is not nauseating but their penchant for violence. The rules of engagement is spelt out in clear terms by the EC, but these hooligans masquerading as party agents would never respect the rules.
The EC has told Ghanaians that nobody has the right to physically prevent anyone from registering and those who have issues should pick challenge forms. But that is not the interest of some political parties. Their intention is to prevent people from registering, and that was the reason for pockets of violence during the just ended registration exercise.
The voting process is supposed to be one of the most peaceful exercises in the so-called advanced democracies but in our case it is a call to arms, especially by the NDC anytime it is in opposition.
Maybe the NDC has never won a genuine election while in government because it manipulated the EC. That is why it always cries wolf anytime the Jean Mensa-led EC takes action to advance the processes for Election 2024.