Empower Police To Prosecute Election-Related Crimes�

No wonder the Police sometimes look lackadaisical at the polling booths; unlike other crimes, the law prohibits them from prosecuting election-related fraud on their own steam. Section 46 of Act 248 the Representation of the People�s Act ties the hand of the Police to the apron strings of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. The Minister must grant permission first, before electoral offenders may be prosecuted. What a silly arrangement! The politician who premeditatedly coaches his or her boys to be fraudulent at the polling station is also the same person who should approve the hauling of the same boys before the courts. Talk of crying for the moon! Knowing from past experience how difficult it is to get politicians to bring themselves to book, the Police Administration may have quietly whispered into the ears of their boys and girls to take things easy to avoid any wild goose chase. It would appear, however, though that things are about to change and that criminals caught at the various levels of the electoral process for the 2016 general elections will be prosecuted promptly. According a Ghana News Agency report at the weekend the political parties in the country have agreed, under the IEA�s Ghana Political Parties� Programme, to get Act 248 amended to give the Police a free hand to prosecute all electoral offenders. The Chronicle whole-heartedly supports this decision and calls on the leadership of the political parties to be bold and resist the inevitable pressure from the boys who are usually sent on these diabolical errands, who will be at the receiving end of the law. Ghanaians are tired of the refrain from losing parties that they had been rigged out of victory by the winner. Let us eschew all fraud so winning parties can beat their chest in public and say �yes, we won cleanly� and losing parties will freely concede victory as admission that they truly lost gallantly. Any country that by any act of commission or omission sanctions fraudulent electoral victories ipso facto also authorizes fraudulent looting of the Consolidated Fund. If this is the culture we want to enthrone then we should stop decrying corruption from the rooftops. The political parties whose discussion under the IEA programme focused on �role and power of the EC in the conduct of elections, biometric voter registration, voting and documents of the polls, E-voting, elections security and election petitions� also urged the EC: * To work with a defined programmes and published timelines to ensure certainty in the implementation; * To have a fixed number of constituencies to be reviewed periodically in accordance with the law and population movement�; * To organize joint training sessions for party electoral officers, party agents and security personnel to ensure collaboration on voting day; * To go to Court to delete the names of unqualified persons on the Voters Register; * To give the Presiding Officer command of the security of the polling station; and * To maintain the �no verification, no vote� regulation. The Chronicle commends the political parties for their ability in achieving unanimity on these recommendations for electoral reforms and hope that they will stick to them. We also call on the EC to accept and implement them for 2016, except that we have a caveat on no verification, no vote. The EC must notify all Ghanaians, long before Election Day, that where the verification machines breakdown and they are not repaired or replaced before the close of polls, all those who are unable to vote as a result, will be given the opportunity to VOTE THE NEXT DAY. Otherwise, �no verification no vote� will be unconstitutional. An entrenched right to vote cannot be taken away through the back door by a mere constitutional instrument No way!