Ahead of 2024 election: Avoid hate speech - Peace Council tells political parties
The National Peace Council (NPC) has called on political parties to avoid hate speech and the use of intemperate language in the 2024 electioneering.
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That, it said, would ensure that the country remained peaceful after this year's elections so that the citizenry could go about their businesses without hindrances.
“Our admonition to the political parties is for them to use temperate language in whatever they say to ensure that at the end of the elections, the nation will still be peaceful,” the Board Chairman of the NPC, Rev. Dr Ernest Adu-Gyamfi, said.
Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamfi made the call at the 2024 first quarter meeting with political parties under the Political Party Trust Building Programme in Accra yesterday.
The meeting, which was aimed at building a national consensus for peaceful elections in 2024, brought together representatives of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the Progressive People's Party (PPP), the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), the Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG), the National Democratic Party (NDP) and the Ghana Union Movement (GUM).
It was organised by the NPC with sponsorship from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), an international non-governmental organisation.
The meeting also adopted the recommendations of the Peduase Stock-Taking Conference held in December 2023.
Key among the recommendations was the need for the Judiciary to expedite action on addressing the issue of time limit in resolving parliamentary election disputes.
“The council, with your input and commitment, will continue its advocacy with the Judiciary to establish a mechanism that will help address parliamentary election petitions in a manner that will be timely, and, if possible, to have all parliamentary election petitions addressed within a 42-day period as has been established for presidential election petitions,” he assured.
He said that would help to create an “inclusive and just process” for peaceful outcomes.
Preparations
Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamfi said: “The goal of the council this year is to have an election that is peaceful and an outcome that is acceptable to all stakeholders”.
As part of preparation towards the December polls, the Board Chairman announced that the Peace Council would facilitate a platform for all political parties and their leaders to commit to peace, the avoidance of electoral violence and a peaceful electioneering at a public forum to be held in the course of the year.
The council, he further explained, had planned to embark on a nationwide advocacy campaign against electoral violence, and would focus on eliminating the re-emergence of the activities of political vigilantism.
To achieve this, he said, the council would sensitise citizens, particularly youth groups within the political space, to the Guidelines on Hate Speech and Other Forms of Indecent Language, the Vigilantism and Related Offences Act 2019 (Act 999) and the need for political tolerance.
Election situation room
Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamfi revealed that the NPC would establish the Election Situation Room during voting and results collation period to receive data and analyse them for strategic interventions and respond to any critical concerns.
The situation room, he said, would be available to the political parties, international election observers and other critical stakeholders as the first point of contact on any issue that may need attention in relation to the elections, during voting, results collation and declaration by the Electoral Commission.
Strategic activities
Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamfi further announced the Peace Council’s plan to organise some “strategic activities and interventions” to engage political parties, the Electoral Commission, security agencies and other governance and election stakeholders to work together to prevent, particularly, election-related violence.
He said the council would continue to engage the political parties beyond the planned quarterly meetings.
Internal structures
“We have observed that when a party’s internal structures work well, it impacts positively on the general governance system of the country.
“For this reason, the council will continue to roll out training programmes to build the capacity of both national and regional executives of the political parties to enable them to address intra and inter-party conflicts that may arise,” he said.
The Board Chairman said the council had already started the capacity-building programme in the five regions in northern Ghana.
The next phase of the programme would be in six regions, namely Ashanti, Bono East, Central, Eastern, Greater Accra, and Volta.
He said there were plans to cover the remaining five regions in the second quarter of the year and crown the exercise at the national level.
Mandate
Touching on the mandate of the Peace Council, Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamfi said currently the institution was handling 298 cases, namely 19 ethnic and communal conflicts; 89 land litigation issues; 113 chieftaincy issues; 24 religious conflicts; 25 election related conflicts; six resource conflicts and 22 others.
The board chairman expressed gratitude to all state and non-state actors for the various roles they played to enable the NDC to return to the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC).
“We have observed that the NDC after their pledge in Peduase have lived up to their word by attending IPAC meetings, and we would like to commend them for that,” he said.
Guidelines
The Executive Secretary of the Peace Council, George Amoh, took the political party representatives through a document containing a code of conduct designed by the council to eradicate political vigilantism in the country.
He also took them through guidelines on intemperate language and urged the parties to chart a new course to ensure responsible electioneering this year.
Deliberations
During deliberations, the National Women's Organiser of the opposition NDC, Dr Louisa Hannah Bissiw, and the Deputy National Women's Organiser of the NPP, Hajia Safia Mohammed, separately recounted past political incidents they each experienced that resulted in violence and deaths.
They, however, expressed the hope that going into the 2024 elections, the necessary mechanisms would be put in place to avoid similar occurrences for peace to prevail in the country.
The NPC Board Chairman, in his response, reminded the parties that the NPC did not have the power to prosecute offences, but could only help to prevent such occurrences through further dialogue.