'Educate electorate on violence free polls'

September 3, 2008 pg 16

Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
A security expert, Mr Emmanuel Bombande, has called for collaborative effort among political parties, the Electoral Commission (EC), the police and civil society to educate the electorate on the need to avoid violent attacks against their political opponents.
That collaboration, he said, was crucial given the recent shooting incident in the Tamale metropolis, which reportedly followed a clash between supporters of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
Mr Bombande who was interacting with the media in Accra on Monday, said the conflicts during the limited voter registration exercise and other conflicts in some parts of the country “are tale-tale signs of what will happen in the election if we do not take steps to stop them”.
Therefore, he said, political parties at the level of the executive must sit down with police commanders to review the causes of conflict situations and take steps to curtail the escalation of conflicts in those areas.
Mr Bombande, who is the Executive Director of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), said the collaboration among the political parties, the EC and civil society should be geared towards educating the electorate on the need to co-exist peacefully with their perceived political opponents.
He said there was also the need to build confidence in the people that all their grievances would be addressed.
Mr Bombande indicated that “the systematic pattern in which violent becomes part of the election” gave Ghanaians a cause to worry ”.
Besides, he said, ‘the verbal violence’ in terms of how politicians attack one another sent some worrying signals.
Mr Bomande charged the leaders of all the various political parties to commit themselves to preventing the escalation of conflict in the country by making political statements asking their followers to conduct themselves peacefully during the elections.