3 months ago
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Journalists were yesterday reminded not to be in a haste to announce early results of the December 7 Elections, since it is the sole mandate of the Electoral Commission (EC) to give out official figures at the end of the polls.
“Announcing uncertified results creates the false impression that a certain political party was in early lead which may turn out not to be the case and in the process fueling the allegation of rigging the election,” the Chairman of the National Peace Council (NPC), Reverend Dr Ernest Adu-Gyamfi, said.
He made the call at an “Editors Forum” organised by the council in Accra, yesterday.
• Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamfi (third from right) with participants
Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamfi said the EC was the constitutionally mandated body who could announce the results of both the Presidential and Parliamentary election results, and not for any media institution, let alone journalist announcing same.
According to him, it was the Chairperson of the EC who announces the presidential results, while the Returning Officer at the constituency declares that of the Parliament.
Speaking on the theme: ‘Promoting Conflict Sensitive Reporting before during and after the 2024 General Election,’ Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamfi said the objective of the council was to facilitate and develop mechanisms for conflict prevention, management, and resolution and to build sustainable peace in the country.
“Our role is to encourage cooperation among all relevant stakeholders in peace building in Ghana. This, we are to do by using cooperative problem-solving skills to produce outcomes that can lead to conflict transformation, social, political, and religious reconciliation through transformative dialogues, ” he said.
To ensure a peaceful environment before, during and after this year’s elections, the Peace Council has undertaken a series of programmes and activities since the end of the 2020 election to ensure the sustainability of the peace of the country.
“After the 2020 elections, the national Peace Council engaged stakeholders in the five constituencies where loss of lives occurred namely, Awutu-Senya, Odododiodio, Ablekuma Central, Techiman South and Savelugu.
The lessons and recommendations from those engagements served as building blocks for a three-day national conference that took place from June 29 to July 1, 2021 in Ada,” he said.
He added that Peace Council had also facilitated dialogues between the political parties on one side and the security agencies on the other side, saying “these meetings were facilitated to bring the parties and the security services together to resolve whatever differences they might have had. Two such meetings have been held since the last elections at the national and regional levels.”
Hate speech, Misinformation and Disinformation, he said, had become “widespread” in recent times particularly with the online news publications and social media, “As we gear up for this year’s election, the need to tackle the spread of false information and manipulative narratives has never been more pressing.”
Misinformation, according to Rev. Dr Adu-Gyamfi had become a weapon in the world of politics, capable of influencing public opinion and potentially swaying election outcomes where the 2020 elections were no exception as “false narratives and misleading content spread like wildfire.”
The Vice President of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), Mr Linda Asante- Adjei, on her part urged colleague media practitioners to be guided by ethics of the profession to ensure their reportage were full-proved before it was released for public consumption, so as to maintain the peace during the polls.
BY NORMAN COOPER
