Election Desk: Why election-related violence should not become a trend - Rev Dr Opuni Frimpong

Ghana is in a crucial election year and the stakes are surely very high.

And this is so because the two political parties in the country are poised on setting their own achievements: the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) hoping to be the first in history to break the 8-year political cycle for parties, and, the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) looking to be the first to have a one-term-president in opposition return to the highest political office for his last four-year term.

But all of that aside, there are bigger concerns about what these great expectations produce, in terms of the downsides, and more specifically, the tensions and the violence that follow them.

This formed the discussion for the first episode of GhanaWeb TV's Election Desk when the host, Etsey Atisu, had a sit-down with a former General Secretary of the Christian Council, Rev. Dr. Kwabena Opuni Frimpong.

According to the revered Presbyterian priest, until deaths related to elections are regarded as personal happenings, they will continue to persist.

Making reference to the 2020 general elections, he said, “It will remain rhetoric if the eight people in the 2020 elections have nothing to do with you. It will remain rhetoric if the Ayawaso death has nothing to do with you; if the eight elections deaths, but assuming the Techiman deaths, one of them: either your father, your brother, your son, your uncle… your daddy, who should have been there to be even going round begging people to help them pay the bills, your daddy is gone.

“He’s gone all because somebody was becoming president; somebody was becoming Member of Parliament, and your daddy was at the collation center and somebody shot him,” he stressed.

Rev. Dr. Opuni Frimpong, who is the current Executive Director of the Alliance for Christian Advocacy Africa, further called for a collective approach in tackling this canker and nipping it permanently in the bud.

Watch the full interview on GhanaWeb TV below:



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