No justice, no peace

In the run-up to the last polls, the country was awash with calls for peace. It had become an industry, with favour and attention seekers all falling over each other to be recognised.

This year has not been an exception. As we inch towards the forthcoming elections, the efforts are on again. From Police Officers’ Wives to the Peace Council, the calls and marches are almost inundating.

Ironically, those engineering such marches and other related activities have not found it important to consider aberrations which trigger civil strife.

As for the Peace Council, the less said about their relevance, the better. They hardly query those whose manoeuvres are a clear danger to the peace of this country.

Peace, as an important prerequisite for development, is a quality no people should toy with: turmoil or civil strife is a worrying development when it happens in a country.

No country can move forward without peace yet all we do to enhance it is lip-service and nothing else. Thankfully, however, we are not at war in Ghana, having lived peacefully with one another for ages now. This picture of a looming war or even simulating is infantile.

. It is ironic, therefore, for people who should know better to go on ranting endlessly about peace as though we were at war.

Peace can only be disrupted when conditions needed to uphold it are eliminated through the deliberate activities of the Electoral Commission (EC) and political players, among others.

We do not begrudge those who parade the streets and speak endlessly on the airwaves about the importance of peace and the need for Ghanaians to uphold this view but ignore the ingredients for achieving it.

We find their pastime warped because they are missing the point. Those ingredients which uphold peace are not being considered at all in their scheme of things, and this we find not only misplaced but hypocritical.

There can be no peace in the absence of justice and fairness. In the matter under review, we are dealing with the forthcoming polls in the country about which imaginary apprehension has been whipped up by those whose machinations with the electoral process has been widely queried by various strands of society—civil society organisations, political parties and individuals, including the clergy.

The peripheral treatment of the inherent flaws in the electoral process, regardless of the order by the Supreme Court that reforms be effected in the system, constitutes a glaring affront to peace.

Let us be sincere in our management of such issues and avoid the pretentious tendencies.