; says Atta-Mills

The elections that brought David Cameron to the British prime-ministerial positon, witnessed a development which is any African country, would have resulted in a serious confusion and possible civil strife. Polls were supposed to close at 5pm but what normally happens is that, if you happen to be in the queue before the closing time, it is fair to be given the opportunity to cast your vote as it pertains here in Ghana. In Britain however, those who found themselves in the queue well before 5pm, were not allowed to vote since the law says “polls close at 5pm”.

In the end, people went home after a little grumble and first in British history, the two political parties, Labour and Conservative who are ideologically poles apart, ended up forming a coalition government. The British people have since rallied behind current leaders of this coalition and the nation is moving on.

In the presidential contest between George Bush junior and Robert Gore, there was so much controversy with voting processes in California to the point where the final results of the elections and declaration of a president had to be made by a Supreme Court judge. Here again, the people of America fell in-line behind their chosen president, and for a period of 8years, supported and respected him as their leader.

As human-beings with blood running through our veins, we all have certain peculiarities that fundamental to all of us and this is why though nations as America and Britain have practiced democracy for centuries, they still do encounter some minor problems during elections.However,what actually makes the difference here is the level of sincerity in that prevails in societies as America and Britain, and also, these societies are not fortunate enough to be blessed with political hermaphrodites, self-appointed pseudo-socialist bigots, shameless tongue twisting thieves and rabid praise singers who crawl on their stomachs.

Ghana is a unitary state

Ghana is a unitary circular state with multi-party democracy as a form of governance. Every citizen has the right to live anywhere within the confines of our boarders with hindrance, if it is done according to law as captured in our statutes. a law abiding Ghanaian, and even non-Ghanaians who have the requisite permit to live in Ghana, is not suppose to be hindered in any way by anybody, as he/she goes about his/her lawful business.

The on-going registration exercise is governed by rules set out by EC which we all, as citizens, must abide by. To qualify as a voter, a person needs to be a Ghanaian citizen, above the age of 18years, either permanent or ordinary resident of a given electoral area, and must be of sound mind and as law abiding citizens, we are all suppose to abide by these rules.

The first day of the exercise experienced a lot of set-backs as a result of both technical and human shortfalls. I actually had the opportunity to talk about those problems on that very night on choice-fm’s current affairs programme “hard facts”.However,we never lost hope in the process and rather called on Ghanaians to remain calm and carry on with the process since those hiccups were to be expected when undertaking a novelty of this magnitude.

But as it has always been the case in our part of the world, instead of learning from our shortfalls and making progression in our endeavours,we often end up committing even worse mistakes and messing ourselves up big time.

NDC bastardized the EC in 2008

In 2008, then Atta-Mills-led opposition NDC created the impression that Ghana was a failed state and that since they were saviors sent from above to redeem us, an electoral defeat for them wasn’t going to be tolerated. Every step put in-place by then administration in preparation for the elections were seriously bastardized by NDC and described as attempts by Kufuor to rig the elections. I remember an attempt by the government to ensure transparency in procurement of materials for EC,suggested a committee to be set up to oversee the process but NDC quickly jumped into the fray and accused the government of trying to interfere with EC’s work, with a subtle intent to manipulate the electoral system.

Then came the issue of CD copies of voters’ register given to the political parties. Without taking their time to critically study the contents, members of NDC quickly jumped through the roof with completely baseless allegations against Kufuor and Dr. Afari-Gyan of colluding to rig the elections.

Only ghost can be found in A/R

This NDC accusation gained so much currency within the party even to the point where their flag-bearer,Atta-Mills,also jumped blindly jumped into the fray with his infamous pronouncements at a mini rally in cape coast to the effect that “EC must investigate the sudden over-whelming upward increase of electoral figures in 13 constituencies in the Ashanti Region, just 2years after the 2004 elections”.atta-mills went on to say that “it is very ridiculous for the figures to change so tremendously in that particular region just 2years after general elections” and went on the quiz “are those living there manufacturing human-beings or ghost from elsewhere?”(front page, The Chronical.3/3/8)

The likes of Tony Aidoo, Kwesi Pratt, A.B.A Fuseini, Raymond Archer and Alhaji Bature used the studios of Ghana’s radio Rwanda (radio gold) to propagate a damn false-hood that NPP is an Ashanti party and because they wanted to perpetuate the dominance of that particular ethnic group in our nation’s governance, a scheme had been put in-place to suppress the rest of Ghanaians.

Again, the unfortunate demise of Ya Na (the overlord of Dagbon people), was also turned into political foot-ball by these very same group of political hermaphrodites who have no decency and a grain of truth in them. Those were the days Kwesi Pratt and his bunch of CJA buffoons were embarking on useless streets demonstrations without recourse to what the constitution enjoins us to do before embarking on such activities, and daring the police to arrest them if they could.

These damn-right charlatans of a now dead and buried CIA are now enjoying state largesse as ministers while the senior ones amongst them are being showered with multi-million ultra modern printing houses, bundles of crisps dollar bills for the payment of their children’s law education in Scotland and diplomatic passports enabling them to travel across the globe with ease to extort cash from dictators superintending over failed Marxist nations.

Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei

E-mail: justnoff@yahoo.com