President Akufo-Addo (left) exchanging pleasantries with former President Mahama
The December 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections have come and gone, with ceremonies related to the induction of the President and the Legislature successfully carried out.
Before that, however, the leading opposition party, the National Democratic Congress, had raised a flag and filed a petition, claiming that the Electoral Commission had not been fair to it in the processes of collation and declaration of results. Subsequently, it went to court to fight out its case.
Rules of the game
Within days, however, former President Mahama and his party are back again in court to correct errors in their earlier petition, which has subsequently been responded to by the President and the Electoral Commissioner.
As all decent Ghanaians would agree, that is the name of the game. That was why the President, during his State of the Nation Address, commended the flagbearer of the NDC, John Dramani Mahama, for going to court to affirm his and Mahama’s basic beliefs that the courts are our last destination in matters of conflict and disagreement.
Mayhem
Unfortunately, in the lead-up to the declaration, unguarded statements from our political leaders were misread by a section of our youth as a call to hit the streets and provoke the police.
The results, as we witnessed on both the ‘regular’ and social media, did not portray Ghana as the true beacon of democracy that we have always prided ourselves in.
Parliament itself as models who should have led the call on the youth to gold their horses became guilty in selling chaos in the House to the international media.
Allowing the laws…
Now that the flagbearer of the leading opposition party is still in court and going through the lawful processes, we believe the marauding youth who hit the streets will be doing themselves and the party they love a lot of good if they relax and restrain themselves from those excesses and join their flagbearer in waiting patiently for the court to make a determination for us to move forward as a nation.
If the angry youth would recall, this is not the first time Ghana has experienced an Election Petition; we saw one in 2012 and it was peaceful from that point into 2016. Ghana was lauded for that and we organised governance and grew our economy eight per cent, attracting partnerships and investments, which culminated in enhanced revenue to fund our safety net programmes, including the Free SHS and National Health Insurance Scheme, youth employment programmes and agro initiatives.
Appeal
That is why we believe all political stakeholders and civil society will help move Ghana forward by urging the youth to hold their horses for the sake of our national welfare and development.
Up till this time, the police have done an excellent job restraining the youth from the time that they attempted invading the offices of the Electoral Commission till the Techiman South and Hohoe, Keta and Odododiodioo incidents.
The next phase of the fight to keep the peace, in our opinion, is for the Members of Parliament, particularly the NDC leadership, to begin to talk their boys into getting off the streets entirely.
This is important in facilitating the total Supreme Court processes to unfold and for the wheels of development for the next four years to begin rolling out.
We must imbibe in them a sense of hope, law and order, instead of helplessness, gloom and despair. We must also teach them to use argument as a force, rather than applying force as an argument.
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