Power Belongs To The People - Kufuor

Former President John Agyekum Kufuor has underlined that in contemporary society, power indeed belongs to the people and therefore, it is incumbent on anybody wanting to lead Ghanaians, to submit to the choice of the people in Election 2012.

He said anybody who would use bullying and impunity to deny the electorate the purity of their vote, commits a treasonable act.

“Anybody wanting to lead us must submit to our choice; we must vote for him or her to become President just like when we get fed up with him, we go again to vote to take him out of power to put another person there...from history, people have done all sorts of things to secure power. Some will kill, some will lie, some would do anything, anything, buy to get the power... but power belongs to the people,” he said.

In a brief address to a gathering of a cross section of the Ghanaian society at the KNUST Hall in Kumasi Tuesday, President Kufuor said the country is in need of a president who will present the whole Ghana and impressed on them to use their votes to choose that person.

“As politicians, we do all sorts of things. At the end of the day, the vote of the people may not come as pure and as true as the people would want...If at the end of the day, the vote is not secured this way, if substantial numbers of the people will begin to feel that they have been cheated one way or the other, I assure you the grumbling might degenerate into untold difficulties for the entire nation,” he added.

The occasion was the peace forum jointly organised by the National Peace Council and the Manyia Palace, at which all candidates vying for the presidential slot in the 2012 election signed a pact, the Kumasi Declaration, which abhors electoral violence, impunity and injustice.

While calling on the Electoral Commission (EC) to do its work dispassionately by exercising impartial refereeing over the December 7 ballot, he also advised the security agencies and the other stakeholders to carry out all their tasks with the required integrity.

The former president cautioned that this is necessary because if at the end of voting, majority of the people felt dissatisfied, their grumblings could degenerate into something more difficult to control.