Accra, April 2, GNA - Mr Kwesi Afriyie-Badu, the Chief Executive Officer of KAB Governance Consult, on Friday commended the media for the expository role they exhibited before, during and after the Voters' Registration Exercise. He said: "The Media's role as a 'Feed Back Weapon' for the Electoral Commission (EC), the Registration Officials, Political Parties and other democratic forces ensured that lapses and other operational challenges were identified and resolved immediately."
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra, Mr Afriyie-Badu commended the Media, EC, Political Parties especially the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and civil society organizations for demonstrating high senses of political maturity. Mr Afriyie-Badu, however, urged social-political commentators, Journalists and other media practitioners to study the electoral process to ensure that information gathering, processing and mode of transmitting, promoted the democratic development instead of acts that turned to negate its credibility.
"Its quite unfortunate and unpardonable for some media practitioners to exhibit total or partial ignorance on a simple electoral mechanism on air, yet refuse to admit their mistakes but propagate these false information with agility to confuse the general public. "Based on these nonessential information, the spin doctors and serial callers also capitalized on it, catapulted further forward making the falsehood become the reality and vice versa," Mr Afriyie-Badu said.
Mr Afriyie-Badu expressed concern about the generalization of local issues as a nationwide problem, adding: "Such an analysis has the potential of tarnishing the credibility and result of the December General Elections." The Chief Executive of KAB Governance Consult appealed to media practitioners to be mindful of the political environment and to work towards reducing the tension, suspicion and antagonism among political opponents.
Meanwhile the National Leader and Chairman of the Convention People's Party (CPP), Dr Edmund N. Delle has commended the EC for promptly responding to the operational lapses during the exercise. He urged the EC to quickly assess its performance during the exercise and map out the appropriate strategies to avoid similar occurrences in Election 2004.
The CPP Chairman said; "the stakes are too high and no political party would allow or accept any operational lapses by the EC and its collaborators before, during and after the elections". He, therefore, reiterated the call for EC, Government and the donor communities to ensure that conducive and level political playing grounds were provided for all players in the game. Dr Delle also condemned the "Political Machismo" creeping into the campaign strategies of some political parties and urged them to refrain from it adding "elections are not won by the number of macho men on the ground but by addressing the needs of the ordinary persons."