The Bono Regional Branch of the National Peace Council has initiated steps to resolve the misunderstanding that engulfed the Electoral Commission’s voter registration exercise in the Banda and Dormaa West Constituencies in the Bono Region.
The move according to the Peace Council is to ensure that there is peace during and after the December elections.
Disturbances in Banda, for example, led to a clash that saw one person stabbed to death.
The Executive Secretary of the Bono Regional Peace Council, Suallah Abdallah Quandah, told Citi News, the council’s aim was to “make sure that such disturbances do not happen again going into the December 7 elections so this should be done as soon as possible.”
“At the moment, we are planning a stakeholders peace dialogue where we are bringing all the actors, especially the NDC and the NPP and the two parliamentary candidates for the NPP and the NDC and some other stakeholders so we can initiate a dialogue and discuss the issue to find out what really went wrong,” he explained.
Aside from the plans, he said sensitisation was ongoing with support from the local council of churches, the Muslim community leaders, and traditional leaders.
“We talk to citizens about the need to appreciate peace and the when peace is breached, the consequences therein,” Suallah Abdallah Quandah noted.
Similar peace processes were successful in the Asawase Constituency, which also had some tensions during the registration exercise.
The leadership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Asawase Constituency signed an agreement to commit to peace before, during, and after the 2020 general elections.
The National Peace Council, after deliberations with the leadership of the NDC and NPP, as well as traditional and religious leaders in the Asawase Constituency, issued a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to get both parties to commit to peace ahead of the 2020 polls.