A coup in Ghana? It may sound alarmist or sensational but not as far - fetched as the question may sound. It’s happened before-in June 1979 when mutinous junior officers and other ranks over threw the government of SMC II which was only months away from an election that would hand over power to a civilian government. The mutinous soldiers (Armed Forces Revolutionary Council of AFRC) did oversee an election, though, which eventually resulted in a civilian government taking over in September of the same year, but the “unfinished business” of the June 4 mutineers was completed a little over two years later when elements of the June 4 “uprising” staged a coup against the civilian administration on December 31, 1981.

In Mali, one of Ghana’s ECOWAS neighbours, mutinous soldiers, not that different from the Ghanaian version of ’79 also took power some three weeks ago from a government that was readying the country for elections in a few months’ time and a president who was not seeking re-election. Mali, like Ghana has in recent times been held up by the international community as something of a success story in Africa’s march towards democracy and so the coup came not only as a surprise but a loss as a disappointment. It was also a disturbing reminder that coups may after all still be options to disgruntled solders and politicians.

Ghanaians go to the polls in nine months’ time. There is a biometric voter registration (BVR) currently taking place. The country is going through the expensive BVR system to minimize fraud and rigging, the causes of much post-election violence. In tandem with BVR is a massive public education campaign by the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) and other civil society organizations on the need for the electorate to desist from acts of omission or commission that could end in violence. But there is still some whiff of fear and loathing regarding the elections. The two main political parties, that is the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the challenging New Patriotic Party (NPP) are approaching the elections with a do-or-die mindset. The presidential candidate of the NPP was taken on by critics when in the excitement of a political platform exhortation to his party supporters used the phrase “All die be die” as a rallying call for vigilance.

However, it is not an NDC/NPP feud that may mar the elections, but instead that threat of a coup before the elections. The Accra Mail has picked up some “loose talk” within certain circles that the Mills administration may or should not be allowed to reach voting day. A very distraught informant told the Accra Mail to “expose” the threat so as to put Ghanaians on alert. Remarks being attributed to one Kofi Adams, an aide to Mr. Jeremiah John Rawlings, the founder of the NDC about demonstrations being planned against President Mills when the campaigning heats up, must not be taken lightly. It is no secret that the NDC founder, for some reasons has fallen out with the John Atta Mills-led NDC. He has not hidden his desire to see the party trounced at the elections to make Mills a one-term president and since an NDC loss would automatically lead to an NPP victory, the NDC founder would not countenance that too. So what are the options left to him? The threat therefore by Mr. Kofi Adams that when the campaign period heats up, there would also be simultaneous demonstrations. Against the NDC for alleged corruption and other gripes would mean a total disruption of the electoral atmosphere and lead to the kind of disorder that would “invite” the military to step in and “restore order”.

Ghanaians may not have the stomach for coups but that does not mean that to some disgruntled soldiers and politicians that is still an option.

Perhaps with such apprehensions in mind, many religious leaders, traditional rulers and civil society groups have been calling for peaceful non-violent electioneering for the December 7 polls. Adding his voice to the call, the Founder and Overseer of the Action Chapel International, Archbishop Nicholas Duncan Williams has made a declaration over the country’s security and protection before, during and after this year’s general elections. In a fourteen-point declaration, he declared among other things that the blood of Jesus will evict every entity and spirit that seeks to destabilize and interrupt the county’s democratic process and Ghanaians should pry against every satanic move to bring the country to a standstill.