Consensus building needed to improve credibility of voters register

A co-founder and former Executive Director of the West Africa Network for Peace-building (WANEP), Mr Emmanuel Habuka Bombande, has underscored the need for consensus building and dialogue to improve on the credibility of the voters register and the management of elections.
He said it was needless to orchestrate demonstrations on the streets that could create undesirable tension that could not solve problems when, in effect, the solutions were found around the table of dialogue.

Mr Bombande was speaking at a symposium organised by the Brong Ahafo Regional Peace Council to celebrate this year’s International Peace Day in Sunyani on Tuesday.
The celebration, which was on the theme: “Partnership for peace — Dignity for all”, highlighted the importance and the need for all segments of society to work together for peace.

Stakeholder engagement

Mr Bombande said inherent in the country’s democratic system was multi-stakeholder engagement to work collectively at all times to address any challenges in the way we organised elections.
He explained that it would be wrong for one of the parties, as a stakeholder, to raise an issue and propose a unilateral solution, in disregard of the collective engagement of all the stakeholders in building consensus and finding a solution that was mutually acceptable to all.
That, he said, was the underlying principle of multi-party democracy — allowing dialogue and consensus building at all times — adding that a culture of dialogue strengtheneds and deepened democracy.

Electoral Commission

Mr Bombande said it was against that important Ghanaian political culture of dialogue that the people must appreciate the approach of the Electoral Commission in asking all stakeholders, the political parties and civil society organisations to submit contributions on how to clean and improve upon the electoral register following the complaints by the New Patriotic Party that the register was bloated.
He said instead of elections providing a peaceful democratic mechanism for managing political transitions and how to choose leaders, election disputes had come to be marked by spates of violence, with electoral periods often inducing great fear for lives and properties among the populace.
“Some politicians deliberately use elections to create fear and anxiety among the people, in the hope that out of the resulting social and political tension power could be won at all cost,” he said.

Regional minister

The Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, Mr Eric Opoku, said the region had some peculiar predisposing conflict situations and that the causes of those conflicts were numerous and varied, ranging from chieftaincy and land disputes, political intolerance, election disputes, undue delay of cases in the law courts to activities of Fulani herdsmen, among others.
The Chairman of the Brong Ahafo Regional Peace Council, Rev. Fr William Kyere, said the fact that the region was perceived as the most peaceful in the country should not be taken for granted.