Tamale, Nov 28, GNA – The Centre for Active Learning and Integrated Development (CALID), has organized a workshop to educate political parties and other key stakeholders on the electoral transition process in the country.
It aimed at sensitising participants on the processes of smoothly handing-over power devoid of resistance to power transfer and seizure of public properties and assets.
The workshop, held in Tamale, and supported by the STAR Ghana Foundation, European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom Agency for International Development (UKAID), was part of planned activities to ensure peace before, during and after the upcoming general elections.
It brought together participants from the Tamale Metropolis, Gushegu and Savelugu Municipalities of the Northern Region.
Participants were taken through the Presidential Transition Act 2012 (ACT 845) and other related topics to broaden their knowledge-base on laws that govern peaceful transition of power in the country.
Mr Samson Lardy Anyenini, a Legal Practitioner, who facilitated the engagement, touched on the Presidential Transition Act 2012, and said it mandated the President and other government ministries and agencies to prepare and present five copies of a comprehensive handing-over notes to the office of the Administrative-General.
Mr Anyenini, who is also a Journalist, said the law required that the copies of the handing-over notes were to be delivered not later than 30 days before presidential elections were held.
He, however, expressed worry that government had not yet initiated the transition process as spelt out by law, and appealed to authorities to ensure the course was carried out, saying; “the move is an important building block to ensure a peaceful electoral process in the country”.
He advised political party activists to desist from forcefully and unlawfully seizing public properties and assets when their party was elected into office.
Mr Mohammed Awal Sumani Bapio, the Executive Director of CALID, noted that transition of power was often characterised by youth vigilantism where most of them seized and destroyed public properties “and so we have to as stakeholders, put in place measures to prevent this act before we go to the polls on December 7”.
“We as peace ambassadors would like to appeal to the general public to live in harmony and peace during this season of elections and ensure we go through the process without any act of violence and destructions against one another,” he said.
GNA