Former President Jerry Rawlings calls for a united Guinea.

Former President Jerry John Rawlings, has urged the current leadership of the Republic of Guinea to exercise good leadership in discharging its responsibility, to ensure that the sanctity of the upcoming elections in the country is not compromised.

The former President also urged the military and other security agencies in Guinea to uphold the values and ethics of the institution to discharge justice, maintain law and order and restore peace and cohesion.

Former President Rawlings who made the call during a meeting on Monday with Cellou Darlein Diallo, a former Guinean Prime Minister and currently the leading opposition leader, also called on newly elected President of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Ghana’s President Nana Akufo Addo, to exert his authority and values of integrity and the rule of law as the ECOWAS Chair, to intervene in the political situation in Guinea ahead of the October 18 elections.

“A framework should be put in place to look into the allegations of injustice, oppression and political victimisation in that country to pave way for a successful, transparent, inclusive and free and fair organization of the upcoming elections,” former President Rawlings urged.

The former Ghanaian leader also used the occasion to commend the President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari for speaking out against the tendency of some leaders to amend their national constitutions to extend their stay in power. He urged African leaders to heed the counsel of the Nigerian leader.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

Earlier, Cellou Diallo who was accompanied by his Chief of Cabinet, Nadia Nahman, said Guinea was facing political challenges ahead of next month’s elections. Of particular concern was the fact that incumbent President Alpha Conde had supervised the amendment of the constitution to enable him contest a third term without consulting opposition parties, while using the military to intimidate the opposition.

“Mr. Condé’s candidacy was announced on national television on Monday August 31. This situation, along with many other social and political issues, is leading Guinea towards a very perilous path, Diallo stated.
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According to Diallo, even though Guinea is rich in natural resources poor governance had affected the peace and stability of the country.

Mr. Diallo who is the leader of the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG), Regional and international partners such as the OIF (Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie), the EU, the UN, France, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, have reportedly denounced the arbitrary change of the constitution to perpetuate Conde’s stay.

ECOWAS INTERVENTION

Diallo appealed to former President Rawlings to use his office and his integrity as a highly respected statesman to intervene by urging the ECOWAS leadership to restore law and order in Guinea. He stressed the need to commence the dialogue decided by ECOWAS, whose preparatory meetings took place in July and August 2020 with a clear objective to iron out the differences between the political actors and to identify and implement all the actions that would make it possible to organize a peaceful, democratic and inclusive presidential election.

“Whiles the opposition continues to await the arrival of the ECOWAS mediator, Mr. Alpha Condé continues to roll out his agenda to organize at all cost the presidential election on October 18, 2020, when the conditions for a transparent election are far from being met. The opposition, during the preparatory meetings, had indicated that it was flexible on the date of the elections and was willing to postpone in order to guarantee the organization of a free and fair election to promote peace and security,” Diallo stated.

Issued By:
Kobina Andoh Amoakwa
(Communications Directorate)

In our series of letters from African writers, journalist and former Ghana government minister Elizabeth Ohene writes about the new normal – from how to hold a socially distant election to attending online funerals.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, we have come to accept that our lives have been turned upside down.

We have been learning to cope with things nobody had ever dreamt about – like not hugging or shaking hands. Social distancing, self-isolation and quarantine have all become terms of everyday use.

Schools have been closed, and parents are discovering anew just how much food growing children eat.

There are things we studiously avoid talking about; the mortuaries are full, not from coronavirus deaths (so far in Ghana, there have been 16 from the disease) but the ban on public gatherings, which means we cannot have normal funerals.

Private burials are allowed but with no more than 25 people and that really is an unbearable experience for most Ghanaians.

So, we are keeping the bodies in the morgues in the hope that this dreadful nightmare will soon be over and the dead can be given befitting Ghanaian burials.

Funeral services are going hi-tech to abide by the new restrictions. The service has the prescribed 25 or less people and the proceedings are streamed online. Many people now sit at home by their laptops and log on to join the service.

If this trend continues, it will totally subvert our funeral culture. I joined an online funeral last week dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Nobody attends a funeral dressed like that.

Now that we have gone through seven Sundays, including Easter Sunday, without church services, it is dawning on all of us that coronavirus is rather dramatic.

We are into the holy month of Ramadan. Muslims have started their fasting, without the congregational prayers in the mosque that mark the breaking of the fast. More and more of us now accept that we are in unsettling times.

The capital Accra and its environs, and the second city Kumasi, were put under lockdown for three weeks and we have emerged from that too with the restriction on the movement of people now lifted.

Frantic activities

At the centre of the entire Covid-19 experience has been President Nana Akufo-Addo. He addressed the nation on the evening of 12 March to tell us of the first two cases of coronavirus in the country.

He announced the ban on social gatherings, the closure of borders, the lockdown in the two metropolitan areas, and he enumerates the tally of confirmed cases of infections.

There is an unstated but awkward fact that runs underneath all the frantic coronavirus activities in the country. We are due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on 7 December.

Elections are keenly contested here and campaigns are usually loud, chaotic and, of course, crowd-centred. Preparations were on a tight schedule and did not leave much room for anything to go wrong.

Poll plans derailed

Then the virus struck and the first casualty was the National Identification Authority. It has not yet been able to finish giving identity cards to everybody above the age of 16. Without it, people cannot register to vote.

The electoral commission wants to compile a fresh voters register, but the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is having none of that and has sworn loudly that it will do everything it can to make sure it does not happen.

The commission had, in fact, planned to start the registration process more than a week ago, but since all gatherings are banned, it seems to be stuck.

Furthermore, the two main parties are gauging each other as the nature of politicking has changed with the advent of coronavirus.

No-one knows if the people’s judgement is going to be based mostly on how the parties and their candidates fare during this crisis.

The candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), President Nana Akufo-Addo, and the NDC candidate, former President John Mahama, know each other pretty well. This is going to be the third time they will be facing each other.

The NPP should have conducted primaries in about 150 constituencies in which it has sitting MPs last December but postponed them to April – only for them to be derailed by lockdown measures. The candidates cannot campaign, at least not in the manner we know.

Party officials are in a bind, will they be able to hold primaries and how will they manage the tensions that come with internal elections if there is no time to heal wounds?

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