Peace Council hopeful of seamless transition process

The National Peace Council (NPC) is hopeful of a smooth transition process following the successful conduct of the 2024 general election.

That, it said, was because systems had been put in place for that.

“I'm hopeful that between now and January 7, they should be able to clear whatever needs to be done and then we should have a smooth process,” the Chairman of the NPC, Rev. Dr Ernest Adu-Gyamfi, told the Daily Graphic in an interview.

He was speaking on the sidelines of the end of a project operated by the NPC and the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP).

Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamfi  said the Peace Council had always been part of the election and so in between the transitional period, if there was any need for it to play a role again, it would do so to ensure that the country remained peaceful and stable.

The NPC Chairman said the council was aware that a lot of things had been done already.

“The current government has put in place measures to ensure the process is smooth. Yes, we are aware that a lot of things have been done. Before the elections, most of the ministries and others were asked to start writing their handover notes,” he said.

The NPC Chairman urged all to, therefore, allow the system that had been put in place to work to ensure a seamless process.

Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamfi advised sections of the youth engaging in acts of violence and looting following the declaration of the election outcomes to put a stop to it.

Last Monday, the Electoral Commission declared the flag bearer of the National Democratic Congress, John Dramani Mahama, winner of the 2024 presidential election.

Results

Per the results declared from 267 constituencies, excluding nine constituencies, Mr Mahama polled 6,328,397 votes, representing 56.55 per cent of the valid votes cast to beat the Vice

President and flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party, Dr Bawumia of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), his closest competitor among the 12 candidates in the presidential election.

Dr Bawumia got 4,657,304 votes, representing 41.61 per cent of the valid votes cast.

In the run-up to the elections, the NPC partnered the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) to operate the 2024 Election Solution Room (ESR) to, among other things, monitor the polls.

Project

The ESR, which was set up at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra, formed an integral part of the Electoral Violence Monitoring, Analysis and Mitigation (E-MAM) project, supported by the  European Union and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with complementary funding from the governments of Sweden, Austria and the United Kingdom.

The ESR monitors, reports, analyses and facilitates response to violent threats to peaceful conduct of the elections.

It is designed to mitigate election violence in 12 West African countries through National Early Warning Systems (NEWS).