At long last the long-awaited December 7, 2024 is just two days away for the country’s presidential and parliamentary elections to take place.
Many are saying this year’s elections are crucial to the country’s peace and tranquility.
Were the previous eight general elections in the country’s Fourth Republic not crucial?
They were in their own right, yet The Ghanaian Times agrees that this year’s too is, if not more crucial.
The paper thinks this year’s general election is more crucial because of the dynamics.
One of the dynamics is that so far, the two dominant parties in the country – the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) each has had four victories, with a victory coming as a four-year term.
Beginning with the NDC in 1992, each party enjoyed two terms in succession and got dislodged by the other.
This has created a phenomenon of an eight-year cycle of political rule in the country.
That cycle lends itself to the notion that it does not matter the performance of either party when given the opportunity to rule, the people would vote the ruling party out after eight years.
Therefore, the picture is: NDC (1992 -2000) and voted out for NPP to come in; then NPP (2000 – 2008) and replaced with NDC 2008 – 2016) and taken out for the NPP (2016 till now).
Today, the ruling NPP says it is bent on breaking that eight-year cycle, hence its catchphrase “Breaking the 8”, which means the party wants to stay in power by winning this year’s general election.
Meanwhile, it is instructive to note that the NDC’s 2008-2016 rule was shared by two presidents – President John Evans Atta Mills, who died in July 2012 for Vice President John Dramani Mahama to complete his term and also win the 2012 general election and got voted out in 2016.
That is to say constitutionally President Mahama had only a term and tried to gain the second term through the 2020 elections but lost that bid.
Today, while the NPP wants to “break the 8”, former President Mahama hopes to “claim his 8” by winning this year’s presidential election to have four years of rule.
The related issue is that the country now operates a hung parliament with all its encumbrances, which neither the NPP nor the NDC would like to encounter, should either of them win the December 7 elections. Therefore, both are doing all they can to win more parliamentary seats than their opponents.
These dynamics alone are enough grounds to see the coming elections as more crucial than all the previous ones.
For us at The Ghanaian Times, all we want to see is successful elections.
And we know successful elections depend on all the stakeholders, particularly the election-management body, in our case the Electoral Commission (EC), the government, the political parties, institutions like the police mandated to play roles in the elections and the electorate, for that matter the people.
The roles these stakeholders play in the lead-up to the elections, during the elections and afterwards are important.
So far, everything is in order and we expect that everything would be in order on Saturday and beyond.
We encourage all registered voters to go to the polls on Saturday and express their opinion in the country’s governance.
This is the time to demand accountability and every qualified citizen should give an input, while having the mindset that every citizen has a responsibility to avoid electoral violence in order to safeguard the country’s peace and tranquility.