Civic Forum Initiative calls for peaceful election

The Civic Forum Initiative (CFI), an amalgamation of civil society organisations, on Friday called on Ghanaians, especially politicians, to ensure that the December 7 general election is credible and peaceful.

Major General Nii Carl Coleman, the Chairman of the CPI, said elections were about the context of ideas and that political parties were selling their ideas to the citizenry, who would decide whether to buy or reject them.

"Election is not a fight, it is not about guns and bullets. If we have our reservations, we are to show it at the ballot with our thumb to show our preference," he said in an interview with the Ghana News Agency.

Major Gen. Coleman was speaking on the side-lines of an orientation workshop for the Reactivation of Civil Society Election Situation Rooms (CSESR) to prepare the coordinators to ensure a smooth electoral process.

The Election Situation Rooms were established by the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG) and CFI to serve as election observatories, conflict mediation platforms, hubs for all information on elections, and as coordinating centres for field observation of the elections by civic society.

“The CSESR is like a citizen journalist, playing that role during elections,” he said.

"We should not fight, we are brothers and sisters and we want to build a peaceful nation," Maj Gen Coleman said, adding that the importance of elections in every democratic dispensation could not be overemphasized.

"People go out to vote expecting a certain outcome for their development and they put their trust in the system. What we are saying is that this should be done in a very decorous way. But we as civil society have a duty to ensure that things are done peacefully," he said.

He appealed to civil society to sure they observed the activities of political actors with a neutral stance, reporting what they see on the ground fairly and accurately, without showing their individual political colours.

"We serve as the gate keepers and we should be able to moderate happenings in the political discourse fairly and creditably."

He said as a civil society forum they had agreed collectively to play a neutral rule, observe and give the other side of the story.

The workshop was organised in Accra by the IDEG in partnership with CFI, with the support from the Embassy of Denmark.