2008 At Daniels And Sons

Undertaking a study of a project proposal for the benefit of a friend can be very challenging, especially where you prognosticate great difficulty even before you have progressed beyond the hypothesis stage.

Ananse's closest friend once confessed to facing such a dilemma: Ananse se yen ko pe mbaa, nanso mbaa mpe no!
It is reflective theme for truthfulness in media coverage of coming events on our over-crowded 2008 national calendar.

Our friends in government are urging people to project a good image of Ghana during the CAN 2008 football tournament. No one has made specific mention of the media but hey, I can feel glances being thrown our way.

The danger will probably not lie with the local media, who may be persuaded to pile up stinking linen until the tournament is over, although that may mean tedious laundry work later.

The foreign media will gleefully report any spectacle of men running erratically about in a dark place, chasing a rounded leather bag of air called a football: I am referring to power blackouts in stadiums during evening matches.

Other threats to our international image will probably come from free lance swindlers and robbers who might think it is a home-grown cocoa season.

They will try to help themselves to dollars, marks, yen, rand, pounds, CFA and whatever foreign currencies will accompany the more than one millions visitors here.

Then there are the coming elections. What happens during the elections will most likely be what the media will report. We can only hope all and sundry are taking note of the mess in Kenya.

A journalist once said that any media attempt to analyse the electoral politics of many countries in Africa these days, was fatally doomed right from the word go. The continent's electoral politics often does not appear to make sense at all.

Whenever an election ends in an African country, the refrain from the opposition is almost, always the same: Bye, bye, yet again, Democracy, this country has never known you!

Things have gotten so increasingly bad, that there is this joke about election results in Africa not being about incumbent presidents or ruling governments getting re-elected, but about opposition candidates getting rigged out of political power.

That may not always be true of course, but that is how entrenched the negative perceptions about electoral politics in Africa has become.

Imagine that more than 300 people have to get slaughtered, many of them inside a church building of all places, so that a country called Kenya can get a president!
You must note that last week, it was not just the opposition in Kenya singing the old rigging blues.

Our friends from the European Union who observed the election say mysterious hands gave Kibaki's vote a generously ample top-up on previous counts, during the final counting of votes.

Then too, foreign news correspondents who covered the election had quite a task trying to qualify their repetitive use of the word “fraudulent” with the almighty anti-libel alibi, “alleged.”

Do you see what I see, Jomo? It would seem that people monkey around with ballot boxes during the transportation of the boxes to counting centres after voting. It is one of the things we ought to be thinking about.

I got student employment as a polling assistant during the election that brought Dr K. A. Busia to power and during Acheampong's Union Government referendum.

All we had for security at the polling station during the presidential election was a morose and sleepy-eyed elderly policeman armed with a truncheon, who occasionally yawned and stared vacantly into the open spaces.

After voting we carried the ballot boxes through the dark, from the Sabon Zongo Primary School at Bawku into town without mishap, but I would not recommend such sloppy security during the transportation of ballot boxes these days.

As a matter of fact, only a few years later, during Acheampong's Union Government referendum, polling staff from a station not far from the one I worked at, were carrying ballot boxes after voting, when they were waylaid by political bandits who snatched some ballot boxes and run off into the dark.

We have come too far and seen the tragic consequences of post-election violence elsewhere to leave anything to chance next year.

One way to avoid trouble is to ensure that security personnel, international observers and party representatives accompany ballot boxes being transported for counting.

Security from start of voting to declaration of results should be such as to leave very few, if any, suspicious of the integrity of the ballot.

As for transparency, Jomo, why, that should be the watch word for next year's elections. Accredited party representatives should participate in the counting process, not in the sense of doing the counting, but in being millimetre-close witnesses of the counting.

You can see from what happened in Kenya last week, that delays make the opposition restless and suspicious. Manual counting of votes is slow, cumbersome and time consuming, but hey, it is more transparent than automated counting.

The experts should truly earn their wages by trying to figure out how vote counting can be completed with very barest minimum of delay.

Fast buck makers certainly have a very quick eye for the seasonal bonanza, Jomo. Some smart fellows in far away London are doing a roaring business selling all manner of CAN 2008 merchandise, from various types of jerseys in Ghana's national colours to a wide range of African Nations Cup souvenirs on the Internet.

Gye Nyame and Kwame Nkrumah cuff links, cute miniature models of the Independence Arch and the Independence Square and jerseys, are on hot sale at www.danielsandsons.co.uk. They go for prices ranging between 30 and 50 pounds sterling apiece.

CAN 2008 beach towels, base ball caps, and woolly hats in Ghana 's colours, go for five pounds a piece.
I have already surmised that there will be more to the tournament than good football and souvenirs.

Crime for example. Those responsible say adequate preparations have been made to ensure maximum security. Fantastic, Jomo.

That is what I call living up to responsibility. Step two will be to let us see evidence of this when the tournament gets underway. We have entered a brand new year this week, or have we? The psychological orientation toward a sense of “newness' is there alright, but is it not just an illusion?

Is clock time real? If we readapted the clock to have only 12 hours in a so-called day, and the calendar to have six months in a so-called year, would that significantly change anything about what is perceived to be time, Jomo?
Never mind, I am off shopping for CAN 2008 souvenirs at Daniels and Sons.

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