“Election Petition has divided Ghana more than ever”

The Editor in Chief of the Accra Daily Mail, Alhaji Haruna Atta says the ongoing election petition hearing at the Supreme Court has worsened Ghana’s division as a people, in spite of whatever positive accolades may be ascribed to it. He says claims that the petition will help deepen Ghana’s democracy or help improve the electoral system are theoretical, but six months after the 2012 elections, the reality is that “we are still behaving as if we are in an election year” with people taking strong, entrenched positions on the petition. “Six months after elections we really should have been coming together and moving on but six months after elections we are still expressing so much anger and frustration… I don’t think this petition, no matter what angle you give to it, no matter what gloss you put on it, it’s not uniting us.” He said Ghanaians can strengthen their democracy in many, many ways but certainly not with litigation. Haruna Atta said Ghana has “since 1992 seen a lot of electoral reforms that did not send us through this stress, tension and trauma. In 1992 it was said that the verdict was stolen, a book was written, it led to the introduction of transparent ballot boxes, then we went on into I/D cards with pictures, then we went on into this biometric system…” He said as a nation we have been able to do all these things without the present stress and trauma, and he would take with a pinch of salt, any claims that the petition is building democracy. “Maybe it’s just an academic exercise but I don’t think you need necessarily to flex your political muscle in this way to build democracy,” he told Radio Gold’s Gold Power Drive Thursday morning. He told programme host, Alhassan Suhuyini that the opposition New Patriotic Party had its foot firmly on the self-destruct button as a result of recent developments, among them the party’s handling of recent differences with one of its founding members, Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby and the contents of a letter sent the party’s chairman, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey by Dr. Kobina Arthur Kennedy, a former presidential aspirant of the NPP. “Dr. Arthur Kennedy’s letter says it all, about the paranoia, the intolerance and so on… Any political party that takes that path is taking the path of self-destruction,” he emphasised.

His paper had published that unlike the NPP which was making itself unattractive to voters per its actions, President John Mahama was making the ruling National Democratic Congress more attractive. “Truly, unless people don’t want to accept it, President Mahama is actually polishing up the NDC, making the NDC less vociferous of so many things and making it more attractive. If you read the story we make reference to the Media Foundation for West Africa’s monitoring of the airwaves during the election period. They were monitoring hate language, they were monitoring insults and-so-on-and-so-forth and a lot of the time the NPP came tops in the majority of the political groupings that used terrible language. “So it’s documented, I’m not making it up. And so any political party that makes intimidation, intolerance, insults and-so-on-and-so-forth, it’s definitely putting people away, it’s certainly not making itself attractive and it’s all come about as a result of this so-called petition.” He said he had himself been a victim of the insults being expressed in the party, with some claiming he had been bought and others saying he was hungry and that his newspaper had collapsed. continued