News making headlines for today's review includes report from the Chronicle that Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene, has advised politicians to be humble and truthful in their quest for power to lead the country. He said since power emanates from the people, they must refrain from acts likely to create confusion, and instead campaign for their votes. The Asantehene was speaking at a special thanksgiving church service at the Saint Cyprian's Anglican Cathedral in Kumasi on Sunday to mark his 62nd birthday and 13th year anniversary celebration of his ascension to the Golden Stool. The New Crusading Guide also reports this in the headline People who want to win power through violence will fail.
Meanwhile, the Daily Graphic informs us that Calm has returned to the Odododiodoo constituency after the recent tension during the just ended biometric registration, Mr. Djanie Mogoah, Chairman o f the Intimate club of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has said. He said the constituency had remained peaceful after the NDC and New Patriotic Party met the police and agreed on working modalities to ensure free, air and transparent elections.
Still in the daily graphic, we are informed that the biometric voters' registration exercise ended successfully last Saturday but with low patronage in many of the registration centers in the Ashanti Region. The intensity of the exercise which characterized the first, second and the third phases, reduced drastically in the fourth phase. The paper quotes this in the headline Registration exercise ends successfully in Kumasi.
In an effort to promote peace ahead of the December polls, Bishop Nii Tackie-Yarboi, Presiding Bishop of the Victory Bible Church International, on Sunday cautioned politicians against the use of intemperate language on their campaign platforms, saying "words used can never be retracted". According to the New Crusading Guide , he said the provocative speech, beating of war drums and attempts to incite one tribe against the other would derail national gains adding that "we must all guard against what we say in public...let's build Ghana through a united front irrespective of which tribe we belong to".
The Daily Graphic also on the need to promote peace reports that Parties must abide by code of conduct adding that the Northern Ghana Diocesan Bishop of the Methodist Church, Ghana, the Rt Reverend Emmanuel Afriyie, has entreated political parties to strictly abide by the 2012 code of conduct for peaceful elections. Addressing the opening of the 51st Annual Synod of the Church in Tamale, the bishop also pointed out that it was time politicians avoided the use of abusive language and to consider the fact that ''not everybody can be in politics because it is a divine call to leadership"
Still from the Daily Graphic, the Bishop of the Akyem Oda Diocese of the METHODIST Church of Ghana, Rt Rev. Col Paul A. Brewu (retd), has advised followers of the various political parties to eschew campaigns that promote insults and the sounding of the war drums. "Events during the biometric voters registration exercise have been unfortunate if we should remember some people preventing fellow citizens from registering because they do not belong to an ethnic group," he stresses.
Further reports also indicates that the Methodist Bishop cautions against politics of insults .The Most Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Asante, the Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Ghana, has appealed to leaders of the church to use their pulpits to ensure peaceful elections in December this year. According to him, Ghanaians must do whatever it takes to ensure that there was peace before, during and after the December general elections "We need to do all we can to ensure peace, during and after elections", Bishop Emmanuel Asante explained.
Finally on the call for peaceful elections, a non-denominational thanksgiving service has been held at Yendi for the coming elections and peace in Dagbon. The gathering prayed for the President, Ministers of state, members of parliament and traditional authorities. The Daily Graphic revealed this in the headline Yendi prays for peaceful elections. Most Reverend Vincent-Sowa Boi-Na, the Catholic bishop of Yendi, said as the country was approaching crucial national presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2012, there was the need for every Christian to pray for the nation.
Away from peace talk, Ghanaians have been urged to stop cross-border registrations-NPP. Mr. Richard Kwadekpo, Head of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) communications Team in the Ho-Central Constituency has called for regular education for border communities to stop cross-crossing borders, to register for elections. According to the Ghanaian Times, he said observation by NPP agents at the various biometric voter biometric voter registration centers in the border communities along the Ghana-Togo frontier, especially the east of Ho, indicated that the practice was rife and might have been going on for some time.
Another report from the same paper indicates that the Chairman of the Kumasi Archdiocesan Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church has called for second look at the present arrangement where metropolitan municipal and district security councils are chaired by partisan political appointees. Mr. Franklin Asamoah a lawyer said 'this does not make for fairness in the application of the law. This was reported by the paper under the headline heads of Security Councils of MMDAS must be non-partisan
The paper further reveals that NDC likely to win December elections –DCE, adding that the infrastructural developments which residents of the Garu-Tempane District have benefited during the past three years, according to Mr. David Adakudugu, the DCE, will enable the NDC to win the December elections .For example, the Assembly has constructed a total of 67 school infrastructure including classrooms, teachers' quarters, toilets and urinals costing millions of Ghana cedis.
Meanwhile, Reverend Professor Elorm Dovlo of the Department of Religions, University of Ghana, has cautioned politicians against using religion as a bait to lure people into voting for them. He said the Fourth Republic began with fervent prayers from well meaning Ghanaians for a God-fearing leader and this had led to a lot of politician now professing to be chosen by God to lead the Country. The paper indicates under the heading don't use religion to bait votes'-Prof Dovlo cautions politicians
We round up today's newspaper review with the Daily Guide's report that says Judges Schooled on Electoral Violence. Ghanaian Judges and magistrates yesterday met in Accra to discuss effective ways of executing their mandate under the Public Elections Regulations 2012, CI72 on voting violence, sanctions and other responsibilities towards the general elections. The one –day seminar, which was designed by the Judicial Training Institute, with funding support from UK's Department for International Development (DFID) was the first in the series to be organized throughout the Country.
This daily news review is compiled by African Elections Project (AEP) Media Monitoring Centre, Accra, Ghana.
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