NCCE, MEDIA HOLD CONFAB ON ELECTIONS (PAGE 14)

THE National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) has held a round-table conference with media practitioners on how best to ensure that the December general election would be peaceful in all communities in the region.
The Regional Director of the NCCE, Mr Emmanuel Quaye-Sowah, who was the principal speaker, urged journalists to be circumspect in their reportage and refrain from publishing or broadcasting issues that would inflame passion, leading to confusion or chaos.
He said the country had gone a long way in nurturing its fledgling democracy, and that it was the responsibility of journalists not to publish anything that would derail the democratic process in the country.
Mr Quaye-Sowah expressed concern over the nature of phone-in calls on political issues, especially calls that had the tendency for plunging the country into chaos.
He, therefore, appealed to the media practitioners to highlight issues that would ensure peaceful elections.
We should all be reminded of what happened in Kenya and Zimbabwe, where lives were lost just because of political power, and refrain from doing anything that would degenerate into tensions and hostilities, Mr Quaye-Sowah emphasised.
Dwelling extensively on the country’s democratic dispensation since 1992 as well as on the core functions of the media, which he said, were to inform, educate and entertain, he said journalists should, therefore educate the electorate on the dos and donts of the elections in such a way that the prevailing peaceful atmosphere would not be disturbed before, during and after the elections.
He said Ghana was at a crucial period because the two dominant political parties, the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the main opposition party, had each won two terms in the general election to govern the country, and were therefore aggressive to win this years’ elections.
He said it was, therefore, necessary for the media not to take sides but to conduct their activities in such a way to win the confidence of the parties.
The Deputy Regional Director of the NCCE, Lord Larbi, expressed the hope that all stakeholders, especially the Electoral Commission (EC), the police as well as the political parties, would play their expected roles to ensure an incident-free election in the region.
The journalists, for their part, resolved not to feed the people with negative information that could mar the peaceful conduct of the elections.