In the lead-up to general elections in Ghana, efforts are made by various institutions, including churches and state organisations like National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) to preach peace before, during and after the elections.
While the peace campaigns go on, the Ghana Police Service (GPS), as a state institution with the responsibility to ensure law and order, also assures the public of its arrangements to maintain peace across the country.
Both the peace campaigns and the police arrangements, notwithstanding, every general election that has taken place in the country since 1992 has come with its own incidents, particularly in the aftermath.
In the face of this reality, The Ghanaian Times, for instance, in its editorials in the lead-up to the December 7, 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections, hammered the fact that even though peace was needed before, during and after the elections, much attention must be paid to the “after” as the most critical period.
Event unfolding in the country after the December 7 elections have vindicated The Ghanaian Times and other sources that held such an opinion.
The election result blues constitute one such incidents occurring after voting, but the biggest after-election problem now is the lawless acts being perpetrated by some members of the public alleged to be supporters of the victorious National Democratic Congress (NDC) party.
Many are worried about these irate supporters looting and vandalising state property and chasing certain public officials out of their offices because they are appointees of the outgone New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.
Even if such appointees are to be relieved of their posts, is it the prerogative of the NDC supporters to do so?
Why can’t they, at least, wait for President John Dramani Mahama to do so with the power and authority vested in him by the state?
There are some members of the public trumpeting that in 2008, even before the NDC would be declared the winner of that year’s elections, its supporters took to violence and that the repeat in 2024 shows their proclivity for such electoral chaos.
The Ghanaian Times thinks whatever the case is, the bottom line is that the police service could not well envisage the chaos occurring now and prepare adequately to stem or contain it.
The NPP minority caucus in parliament has complained about the looting and violence going on and asked President Mahama to call his supporters to order.
As a listening President, Mr Mahama has urged supporters of the NDC to refrain from destroying or looting state properties.
He has gone further to encourage party members to act responsibly and avoid behaviours that could undermine the trust Ghanaians have reposed in the party to govern the country.
The Ghanaian Times thinks if the violence is actually being carried out by NDC supporters, then they immediately need to heed the President’s appeal as that would show their respect to the first gentleman of the land.
That obedience would also save the NDC supporters from blame or accusations they don’t deserve.
The truth is that certain criminal elements can infiltrate the system and unleash violence on innocent people and property.
Think about it: were they really NDC supporters that invaded the Ejura police station in the Ashanti Region to attack the police there, free crime suspects and burn the station or some criminal youths who chose to cash in on the situation that NDC supporters were unleashing electoral violence?
Also, will the NDC supporters accept that they were the ones who burnt the Kantamanto market in Accra?
It is time the police made the necessary plans and adopted measures to arrest criminals undermining law and order in the country rather than seeing the perpetrators of the ongoing chaos as a certain party’s supporters and treating them with kids’ gloves.