Respect the will of voters at polls; parties urged

Candidates running for this year’s presidential and parliamentary elections have been asked to have the courage to respect the will of voters, however, tasteless they might find that.

The General Overseer of the Emmanuel Salvation Church, Senior Apostle Anthony Ahenkan, cautioned that any attempt to subvert the decision of the people would be unhelpful to the peace and stability of the nation.

“That could snowball into something nasty and destroy the democratic progress made over the past two decades”, he proclaimed in what he said was a prophetic message to the country through the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Sokwai near Ntensere in the Atwima-Nwabiagya District.

Apostle Ahenkan called for strong support for the Electoral Commission (EC) to efficiently and independently carry out its constitutional mandate.

It should be provided with what it needed to ensure free, fair, transparent and credible elections, the outcome of which would be accepted by all the political parties.

He said the world would be watching and the expectation was that President John Dramani Mahama would keep his promise of a clean poll, pointing out that, he owed it a duty to himself, the people and posterity, to hold the nation together.

He appealed to him not to do anything that would remotely point to abuse of incumbency or misuse of the coercive powers of the state for unfair political advantage.

He urged everybody to conduct themselves responsibly, remain on the alert and help to prevent cheating during the polls.

Apostle Ahenkan said this was way forward to protect the peace and sustain the nation on the path of multi-party democracy.