Exposure to the deadly risks of COVID-19 has become an avoidable sinister debt imposed on Ghanaians by the Electoral Commission and sanctioned with the orders of the Supreme Court

1.           The lives and livelihoods threats of COVID-19 pale in significance to the veil of ensuring elections win at all cost. Ghanaians have become victims of a philosopher queen drunken in technicalities and enamored by knights dressed in uniforms of pretentious oblivion. The country now faces a self-serving political crisis of human insecurity as the social contract of leadership responsibility to protect the citizenry from harm is now an aberration.

2.           A cursory glance at the compliance rate of the belated mandatory mask wearing in public should provide a cue into the porosity of the assurances that there would be strict adherence to the COVID-19 prevention protocols during the now green-lighted voter registration exercise across the country. All citizens are now at greater risks of COVID-19 exposure because of leadership overreach and ignoring the voices of responsible adults in the public arena sounding alarms regarding the high price of debt to be paid in terms of uncontrollable infestations and lost human lives. Unbridled partisanship politics requires a pathway of self-reflection and correction to avoid tyrannical rulership of winner’s knowledge is absolute.

3.           The political crisis of human insecurity and vulnerability is real as the “accrual rights to vote” is subjected by the apex court to the restrictive and omissive dictates of the CI 126 amidst a pandemic ravage. And by design, the other sides of the partisan pendulum are compelled to comply or else they relinquish on a silver platter the rights to determine who wields state power and authority in 2021. Yet society can be spared all associated anxieties given the daily rising COVID-19 case counts, and the seemingly “death trap” nature of the country’s health system.

4.           Protection of citizens from aggression is the primary responsibility of all elected state officials and public agencies. COVID-19 is an aggressive pandemic seeping through the pores of healthy bodies and wreaking havoc locally and globally. It seems the EC’s clinging to mandated technicalities, the Supreme Court orders placing societal interests below the same, and the compelling calls by all others to mobilize for the voter registration exercise have given an imprimatur to sacrifice citizens on the altar of the pandemic. This is certainly quite a steep debt price to pay by citizens expecting protection from their state leaders against any forms of aggressiveness.  

5.           The way partisan politics is practiced in the country needs a thoughtful revisit. Dogmatic inclinations clouded in winner takes all mentality and absoluteness of rulership are inherent with unintended risks and consequences inimical to the broader societal interests. To mitigate such risk factors, the A&A Network and partners advocates the adoption of the Blended Representation Principles (BRP) of Governance. For details on BRP, visit www.anani-afelenetwork.org.     

June 27, 2020