Ghanaian Times: Preparation towards December 7 polls commendable

Two significant events happened in Parliament last week, precisely on Wednesday and Saturday, unusual sitting days of the house.

As part of holding the state institutions accountable to the people, Parliament, in its wisdom, summoned two institutions to brief the house, as representatives of the people, about the state of preparedness towards the conduct of peaceful elections on December 7 and more importantly, how to sustain the peaceful environment in the country.

Taking his turn on Wednesday, the Minister of National Security, Albert Kan-Dapaah, gave the assurance that adequate measures had been instituted to ensure peaceful conduct of the elections, with special attention on the flashpoints across the country.

He appealed to political parties to let national interest override their partisan interest. We infer that national interest means that political parties contesting the December 7, which is barely a month away, must play by the rules of the game in ensuring that peace reigns during and after the elections.

More profoundly, the Chair of the Electoral Commission, Jean Mensa, made a passionate appeal to Ghanaians – “Let Peace Reign”- when she took her turn to brief Parliament on preparation towards the conduct of the December 7 polls.

We are enthused to learn from her that the EC is fully prepared and ready to conduct a successful, credible, fair, orderly and peaceful election, having secured, among other logistics, 74,800 new Biometric Verification Devices with enhanced features to speed up the verification process at the 38,622 polling stations across the country.

It is refreshing that barely a month to the polls, the elections supervisory body has delivered some of the items required for the elections, including ballot boxes, to its regional and district offices across the country.

Very significantly, it gladdens us that the EC is not leaving anything to chance in terms of public health, having also designated some officials and named them as ‘COVID-19 Ambassadors’ to be deployed at all the polling stations to strictly enforce the COVID-19 protocols by ensuring sufficient COVID-19 items at the centres for use.

This effort is laudable, given the resurgence of infections in the country. We must, therefore, strictly enforce the COVID-19 safety protocols to nip in the bud further infections in the country.

Touching on the very important issue of security, the EC boss told Parliament that it had since the beginning of the year been engaging the security agencies under the auspices of National Security Task Force by providing them with relevant pieces of information, including potential flashpoints, to assist them plan effective strategies to deal with eventualities on election day and days after.

We commend Parliament for this initiative and similarly pat the backs of these state institutions for their readiness to ensure credible, fair, seamless, transparent and peaceful elections.

Indeed, the commendations will come in droves when they effectively implement this laudable security and safety architecture.

Of course, the security, peace and stability of this country during and after this crucial election can only be assured with public cooperation.

We, therefore, urge the public to take advantage of this golden democratic opportunity to come and exercise their franchise in an orderly manner.

Let we remind them that the security agencies are clad with all the powers to swiftly deal with any rabble-rouser, to maintain the security and stability of the country.