If Ghana has any friends at all this is the time to act! Friends of Ghana must not wait until after the elections in Ghana to try to contain any post-electoral turmoils.

Return from a recent visit back home three weeks ago makes me convinced that the sitting government has no electoral scruples and is determined to rig the forthcoming general elections in December 2004. The fraud has already begun.

The ruling government is making everything possible for constituencies and regions in which they perceive to have strong support to get lots of logistic support and longer periods of registration than other electoral regions. For instance, the Ashanti region had twice as much time to vote than the Greater Accra region, a much larger entity. Intensive radio phone-in pleas to extend the deadlines have been ignored. In the northern Ghana, the NPP is even encouraging only their supporters to vote and actually putting a lot of impediments against their perceived opponents!

As specialist African observers always remind us, in Africa internal strife and instability often begin with a disputed general election. Everything points to the fact that the Kufuor NPP government is determined to win by hook or crook. They must be stopped!

The international community must not just wait until election day to send passive observers there. It would be too late. The international community, Ghanaian pressure groups outside and friends of Ghana everywhere must help Ghanaians in the country by putting pressure on this unscrupulous government to stop interfering with the electoral commission and provide funds for the commission to:

i. Open Up the Voter Register. The voter register must remain open up to election month and the commission must allow all eligible Ghanaians living in Ghana and out of Ghana to register to vote.

ii. Stop the NPP from using State Funds to Buy Rural Votes. The NPP is cashing in on the poverty of the people of the Upper West region and other parts of Ghana that has traditionally always rejected the NPP and its preceding/parent parties to literally buy their votes. They are literally distributing HIPC funds, mainly in the form of cash to these poor voters and instructing them to vote for them. This is highly unscrupulous. A negative education is being given here to indicate that voting means paying someone to choose the one who pays. Concerned groups and the international community must counter this miseducation.

iii. Send in Effective Electoral observers. In December the international community must do well to send in EFFECTIVE electoral observers, indeed, OVERSEERS to oversee the elections.

Many more things can be done. But failure to act can mean a lot. It can mean any of three things:

i. People Power: A people's power a la Philippines to bring down the fraudulently elected government;

ii. Civil Disobedience: a general undermining of the fraudulently elected government through disregard and general civil disobedience, leading to a collapse of state structures, and

iii. Military Coup d'etat: the usual African problem - an unfortunate military coup that would set us back on our progress at democratic experimentation.

I appeal to all friends of Ghana to do something to help Ghanaians in Ghana avert an electoral fraud by the ruling Kufuor NPP government in December 2004.

-- AB Bodomo(Hong Kong)
email: abbodomo@yahoo.com.hk