The electorate should promote peace

The electorate or voters are essential stakeholders who must keenly promote peace before, during and after the December 2016 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. This is our motherland. Ghana is the only country we the resident citizens have. We must protect its peace.

Followers of the Lord Jesus are to love our neighbours, be responsible stewards of our personal and community resources, and promote communal peace.

“Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. 4 Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, 5 so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other. 6 In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. 10. Love each other with genuine affection,[e] and take delight in honouring each other. 16 Live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all.” (Romans :-a, 10 & 16 NUT.)

What is it that will make for peace in the communities? We should engage in earnest prayers for these:

• Pray that the citizens will exhibit good conduct and appropriate voter registration practice in the process of the compilation of a credible final voters register by the Electoral Commission.

• Pray that the electorate will be responsible and participate in preventing a bloated voters’ register for any polling station or constituency; exposing under-age registration and any negative registration practices.

• Pray that voters will attend various political rallies with open minds to hear the campaign messages and carefully evaluate them to guide them in their choice of leaders.

- That their conduct at any rally will be such as to promote community peace.

• Pray that voters will turn out in their good numbers on Election Day to exercise their civic responsibility in choosing our Parliamentarians and President.

- That they will vote peacefully at the polling station and go home peacefully.

• Pray that voters will follow closely and calmly the process of the release of the results.

- That voters will be conscious that different parties may emerge winners at different polling stations, and that what is final is the total collated results in a constituency for an MP election and the national total for the election of the President.

• Pray that during the declaration of results all voters will exercise responsible conduct with a sense of “Ghana must win peace.”

• Pray that voters will not participate in any violent activity after the elections.

• Pray that at the constituency, parliamentary levels and also at the national Presidential level, winning voters will rejoice responsibly and the non – winning voters will carry themselves well as good losers.

• Pray that all conduct of all citizens in the communities will be that of mutual respect and love for peace.

Every voter must be an agent of peace in his community and polling station. Ghana must win.

(The author is a Leadership Development and Cross-cultural Ministries Consultant, an International, conference speaker and formerly General Director / CEO of Scripture Union Ghana. Email: ghanajesuscrusade@gmail.com/ sughanaho@gmail.com)