The Electoral Commission (EC) has urged electoral staff not to accept gifts from party agents during Sunday´s poll. This is because by accepting gifts, including food, the electoral staff could pander to the wishes of the agents. Azu Boxco Anyigire, Principal Electoral Officer for the Bawku municipality, who gave the advice, cautioned that some of the gifts, especially food could be laced with drugs. He said it has been discovered that some food given out to polling officers by the party agents had been laced with drugs in an attempt to rig the poll at polling stations. “As soon as they had eaten the food, they began to doze-off and the political party agent, at the polling centres stuffed the ballot boxes with thumb printed ballot papers,” he alleged. He did not mention which election year this took place.

This was revealed at a forum organised by the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) as a last minute opportunity to educate the electorates in all the flashpoints of the three northern regions on the do’s and don´ts of the electoral process at Bawku in Upper East Region.

Mr. Azu said to avoid any political wrangling after the December 7 general poll, the Electoral Commission has instructed all districts, municipal and regional offices nationwide to provide their own food for their electoral officers on that day. He said in Bawku, they decided to give their staff Ghc 4 each to prepare their own food and send it to the polling centres because of the sensitive nature of the place. He also added that the presiding officers, and their polling assistants would wear uniform and identity tag to differentiate them from the party agents and others who were permitted by law to work at the polling centres on the d-day. He assured Ghanaians that the EC has innovative measures to ensure peaceful, free and fair elections. “We have a system to check fake voter ID cards, the polling booths are tall enough to cover voters who will like to show their ballot papers to indicate the party they voted for”, he said. Mr. Azu said some chiefs forced their people to swear by gods that if they failed to vote for a particular party, the gods should kill them, describing the act as barbaric and cited an incident in Binduri Constituency where a father drove his son out of his house because he did not vote for a particular party.

The Municipal Superintendent of Police, Commander Blewashie Godwin Cahsman assured residents of Bawku that there were enough police force to be attached to every polling centre and would not hesitate to deal drastically with any mistreat who would breach the peace. “There is a stand-by Rapid Deployment Force to respond to any act that will result in violence”, he emphasised. He urged all and sundry in Bawku to eschew fear and intimidation and come out and vote on December 7.
The Municipal Director of National Commission of Civic Education, Mr. P.P. Apabe Baba told the participants that they were equally important as all aspiring candidates, therefore, should not dehumanise themselves but live in a manner that commanded dignity. He said during the pervious elections, politicians who took them for granted were now living in fear because their thumb were more powerful than their positions. Mr. Baba took the participants through civic responsibilities and peaceful co-existence. “Bawku is a flash-point because it is a conflict prone area”, he concluded.

Pastor Samuel Nachinaab of Deeper Life Church in Bawku exhorted the participants with a lot of Bible quotations to seek peace as the only vital tool that would make the December 7 election peaceful. He urged the police to take the traffic regulation very seriously to avoid the unnecessary deaths through reckless riding of motor bikes anytime politicians visited Bawku.

Mr. Edmond Gyebi, a representative of CDD said the three northern regions were dear to the hearts of all Ghanaians because of the deprivation of the place. However, the intermittent conflict in the area further deteriorated it, making the inhabitants´ conditions worse. He said that was why CDD embarked upon the campaign to educate them on the need to have free and peaceful election in December. The participants at the forum included opinion leaders of all the tribes in Bawku, religious leaders, chiefs, youth leaders among others.

Source: The Ghanaian Times, Tuesday December 4th 2008, No. 15,