Political parties urged to play it clean and fair

The Most Reverend Gabriel Justice Yaw Anokye, Catholic Metropolitan Archbishop of Kumasi, has appealed to political parties to play it clean and fair to make the outcome of the December 7 polls credible.

He said they should accept to work together to protect the integrity of the elections and prevent any nasty incidents.

Archbishop Anokye was speaking at the opening of a three-day training of trainer workshop held for local election observers at the Christian Village in Kumasi.

It was organized by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference with support from Star-Ghana and the Catholic Relief Service as part of efforts at assisting to make the upcoming polls peaceful.

Seventy-one participants drawn from all the 20 dioceses of the church across the country attended.

Archbishop Anokye said although Ghana is noted to be a very peaceful nation that should not make anybody to be complacent.

“It is important for the key political actors to get their acts right and avoid doing anything funny or evil that can ignite trouble,” he said added that it was time politicians did away with what he termed “the must-win at all cost mentality”.

Mr. Joseph Asumang Gyeisaw, National President of the Justice and Peace Commission, Ghana, called on the parties, the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) and the Electoral Commission (EC) to educate voters on the proper way to thumbprint the ballot to reduce the unacceptably high number rejected ballot papers during elections.

In the 2008 general elections, there were 205,438 rejected ballots representing 2.4 per cent of the votes cast.

He said this was something that needed to engage the attention of the stakeholders.

Mrs. Augustina Akumanyi, Deputy Chairperson of NCCE, appealed to the parties and their supporters to act responsibly and- refrain from removing and defacing posters of their political opponents.