Our best bet is to hold elections when we can deliver a clean list of electors

Jun 22, 2019 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

I write today on a topic that is very much in the news; the urgings concerning early elections. We must understand that successive governments have made short shrift of the Gecom body. This body is to the players just another football to be kicked hither, thither, and yon.
Gecom was never programmed to provide for early or snap elections. Gecom has been cultured to go along at pedestrian pace and this will not change. It is accepted by the combatants that the voters’ list is flawed and in urgent need of overhauling. Nevertheless they are bawling for early elections which is practically nigh impossible.
Gecom cannot make a credible list within 60 or even 90 days. It is best for all of us to wait on reasonable time for the authorities to develop a list acceptable to all parties.
There is an alternative to this, and this is a route through which Ghana was taken many years ago by Flight Lt. Jerry Rawlings. That country was thus able to reassert itself and get rid of corruption and the cartels that had slowly developed and that were sucking the economic marrow of the state.
To take this route successively, our joint services need to be proactive and take full control of the nation. A constituent assembly would need to be established with a clear mandate of rewriting the constitution within an eighteen-month period, after which credible elections would be held and may the devil take the hindmost.
But our men in uniform lack the fortitude to undertake any such venture. Most of the officer class members are only interested in duty free perks and the like, and ensuring that they can be handsomely pensioned off.
Our best bet yet in the circumstances is to hold elections when we can deliver a clean list of electors. Anything less would just spell disaster. About the head of the Commission, we need to attract Dr. Surujbally for one last heroic task.
Regards,
Cyril Walker

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