When the Saints Come Marching In..

Election Diary/K. Gyan-Apenteng

When the Saints Come Marching In..

 The thought struck me after yet another prayer at Church for peace "during this year's elections" that perhaps we need to find another way of electing our president and MPs instead of going through the quadrennial ritual of inducing mass hypertension in the entire adult population of Ghana. The subtext of a lot of the public discourse about "this election year" is a putative threat to the peace ands tranquillity of this country. The question is: whence this threat?

 If you want to track the story of this election you can do no worse than plotting two different narratives running parallel on the same page. One is the story of a stable democracy that is merely going to elect a set of custodians of its political, economic, and social fortunes for the next four years. According to this narrative, there is nothing to worry about.

 Running in the parallel track is the narrative of fear and apprehension – that is the track we were running on in church last Sunday. It is also the track on which much of the nation has been trekking over the past several months. You just have to thumb through the countries newspapers or listen to radio and watch TV to notice how deep the anxiety about the possibility of post-election violence runs.

 Every public activity has a "peace quotient" and the tempo is beginning to rise as we get closer to the vote. Last Sunday, The Christian Council organised a joint prayer session at the Independence Square to pray for the country "in this election year". But that is at the predictable and milder end of the peace blast. At its intense manifestation, people are praying and fasting around the clock for peace.

 But, I need to return to the question: where does this threat to the country's peace come from? This is the crux of the matter. It appears that we will need to splice the running tape of this story in order to get a sense of what is going on. Basically, we have a saints and sinners situation in which the politicians, billed as the sinners are said to hold the keys to a peaceful election in December.

Or, to be more precise, the politicians are believed to be responsible for the potential and perhaps actual destruction of the peace "we enjoy in this country". In that sense, the people together are the guarantors of peace in normal times but the politicians are the wreckers of peace during this election year.

However, all the political parties and leading politicians say they are unequivocally committed to peace. Indeed, almost all the leading politicians were also at the Independence Square on Sunday, which made the meeting a convocation of sinners and saints together. So, why are we so afraid that matters can get out of hand in December. 

The examples of Kenya and Zimbabwe appear to be praying on our minds, or at best serving as cautionary tales to the story of our own election year. But more to the point, everyone knows that when violence begins the only word the rampaging masses will take is that of the field commander in the street. And as at this point no-one knows who those field commanders are likely to be.

 This is the knowledge that is fuelling the fear. We know that out there are some people who can, and probably will, foment trouble at the first opportunity. We also know that they will do so in the name of political parties whether they have a mandate from the parties or not. At that point, under pressure from the grassroots, the party leaders refuse to condemn the trouble makers and thus put more fuel on the fire.

 We also know that the potential troublemakers were not, in all probability, at the Independence Square on Sunday or at any church, mosque or civic function at which peace has been preached. It is even unlikely that they watch or listen to the various radio and TV programmes advocating peace during this election year.

Therefore, it would appear that the peacemakers should define their targets a bit more tightly because the assumption that anyone can start trouble is not true. We need to define the target of the peace messages with professional finesse because a generalised message sprayed randomly across the population will mean nothing much to anyone. If this is not done correctly, the saints will come marching in, but it will be the sinners whose footsteps will prevail.

Source : www.africanelections.org