Why must police go to polling stations armed?

Have you paused to consider the advertising by the two major parties this year? It’s a lot of money.

In 1996, 2000 and 2004, the 15 per cent commission earned by an advertising agency from placing election ads on radio and TV was enough to put up a storey building for the CEO.

Not much has changed, except that in 2024 the radio and TV stations are allowing on their channels, messages which four years ago would have attracted the opprobrium of the moral community.

The language has become more colourful, if more personal.

But as a 16th Century British playwright, John Lyly, noted in ‘The Anatomy of Wit’, all is fair in war and love. Who loves whom in Ghana’s 2024 Election, I don’t know. Looks more like a war.

It’s obvious that between Mahama and Bawumia there is no love lost.

They may not hate each other mortally, but their language seems to confirm what the English have long suggested, that “to know what your best friend thinks of you, pick a quarrel with them”.

They are smearing themselves with mud and I can bet my last cedi that they would not hesitate to throw excreta if some were within reach. Seems as if for these two “kinsmen from the North”, this year’s “war” is the opportunity they had long sought to unleash the venom stored in their body’s 800 million alveoli for years.

My advice to all Ghanaians, however, is to leave them alone. Nana Kwame Ampadu once sang to the effect that “ehuru a ebedwo”; literally, the water (or oil) will not boil forever: it will soon cool.

By 2a.m. (dawn) of December 8, 2024, the outcome will be known (at least, to me). By 9a.m. all the acrimony will be over, all things being equal. 

Gunned down

In Ghana, however, we know that all things are not always equal. Only four years ago, on December 8, 2020, a total of 23 Ghanaian citizens left home at 6a.m. for polling stations in Techiman, Odorkor, Ablekuma and Savelugu.

Eight of them never returned home alive. They died, gunned down by state security agencies. The 15 others were seriously wounded.  

The official truth was that they were involved in conduct contrary to the law. What was the unofficial truth? None: dead men don’t speak.

Apart from a few civil society organisations, the moral community in Ghana and the NDC (obviously) who occasionally flag it in their expressions of outrage, there has been a loud silence in official circles; in fact, government has kept mum on it for eight years.

I ask: is it okay that eight years after this brutal murder, no commissions or committees of enquiry have been set up to, at least, ask the security officers why they pulled the trigger on unarmed civilians? Who gave the command?

Because of ‘Winner Takes All’.  

Foreboding

That is why for the 2024 Elections, last week’s warning by the Commanding Officer of Achiase Jungle Warfare that “the military will beat anyone who foments trouble” rings with a sense of foreboding.

Hear him: “I’m telling you here that I will only come in this 7th December within the Akyemansa enclave, and when I come I will not talk. I will beat you.” He was addressing a “Peace Concert” at Akyem Oda!!

Coming events cast their shadows before.

Remember January 31, 2019. From the acts of brutality unleashed against civilians by state actors during the Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency by-election, a number of Ghanaians have been left maimed – forever.

My sadness is not necessarily because these unfortunate victims of state violence have been left uncared for or uncompensated; my soul is overwhelmed with indescribable sorrow that not many years after the Ayawaso Wuogon tragedy, we have allowed a military officer to speak words that strike fear into the population.

Why should the police go to the polling station with live ammunition? In the first place, what constitutes an election offence so grave that armed policemen/soldiers would be called in?

Whatever happened to hot water cannons, pepper spray and good old tear gas? Why are we being treated like state enemies who must be annihilated? 
Because of ‘Winner Takes All’.  

Remember September 2018. Chereponi (Northern Region) was boiling in the heat of a by-election.

Four persons had been shot and more than a dozen had sustained multiple wounds resulting from stone-throwing by persons believed to be members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Why? Because of ‘Winner Takes All’, empowering a President, the monarch of all he surveys, to appoint Supreme Court judges, Ministers, CEOs, Board chairmen and Ambassadors. Is that why people must die and children become orphans?  

Today, for winner to take all, even state security will treat you as an enemy if you are not on government side.

Ghana was once so beautiful!

The writer is Executive Director,
Centre for Communication and Culture.
E-mail: ashonenimil@gmail.com