Let’s educate people on snatching ballot boxes — EC
The Upper East Regional Director of the Electoral Commission (EC), Mr James Arthur-Yeboah, has charged stakeholders, including traditional rulers and opinion leaders in the region, to support the EC to educate people to prevent the snatching of ballot boxes during the December polls.
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He stated that it was the collective responsibility of all to ensure that the polls were conducted in a peaceful manner, adding that those who engaged in such lawless acts must be smoked out and dealt with according to the law.
Mr Arthur-Yeboah made the remark at Bolgatanga on Saturday when some representatives of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs),Faith Based Organisations (FBOs) and Community Based Organisations (CBOs) raised concerns about measures being put in place to avoid the snatching of ballot boxes during the polls.
The concerns were raised during a day's capacity building workshop for representatives of CSOs,FBOs and CBOs on the electoral process and their respective roles in ensuring peaceful polls in December.It was organised by the EC with support from the Ford Foundation.
District Assembly Election
Some of the participants recalled that during the last District Assembly Election held earlier this year, a polling station in the Bolgatanga Municipality experienced an incident of ballot snatching hence the need to guard against the occurrence of any such incident in the December polls.
Mr Arthur-Yeboah wondered why people would want to snatch ballot boxes and sounded a word of caution to people who would want to engage in such acts saying "we would call on the security agencies to deal decisively with them".
He, however, pointed out that it was important that the community members acted responsibly by volunteering credible information that would safeguard the polls and that is why "I am entreating traditional rulers to engage the youth and educate them to know that they would be prosecuted if they are caught engaging in such lawless acts".
The director stressed the need for the stakeholders to support efforts at preventing the occurrence of such negative acts in all polling stations across the region since such acts did not augur well for peaceful conduct of the polls.
"Let us all pledge and work hard towards ensuring that there is no snatching of ballot boxes in this region let us not give anybody the chance to truncate the electoral process," he further emphasised.
The Deputy Regional Director of the EC, Mr Oscar Apemah Baah, educated the participants on voting, accreditation, benefits of election monitoring and observation, the duties of a Returning Officer, Presiding Officer, polling assistants and the District Election Officer.
He also discussed with the participants their respective roles in ensuring peaceful polls on December 07, 2016.