A Senior Lecturer at the University of Ghana and political analyst, Dr Joshua Zaato, has warned that violent disruptions at collation centres pose a serious threat to Ghana’s electoral credibility and must not be rewarded through legal or political outcomes.
Speaking on the Kpandai Parliamentary election rerun, Dr Zaato argued that the violence witnessed at some collation centres did not happen by accident but was a deliberate attempt to manipulate the electoral process.
“The violence we are seeing today did not start in Parliament. It started at the collation centres, when thugs and hooligans attacked and destroyed things,” he said.
According to him, the movement of disputes from the collation centres to the courts was itself a consequence of those violent actions, stressing that such conduct should never become an acceptable pathway for resolving electoral losses.
Dr Zaato cautioned against what he described as the “rewarding of bad behaviour,” warning that allowing cases arising from vandalised collation centres to succeed in court could set a dangerous precedent.
“If we allow this conduct to stand, it becomes a case study in rewarding hooliganism. Anyone who is losing will simply mobilise supporters to destroy a collation centre and then head to court,” he warned.
He explained that in today’s electoral system, candidates often already know whether they are winning or losing even before results reach collation centres, due to access to pink sheets and digital tracking.
“A candidate who is winning will not storm a collation centre. It is usually the one who already knows he is losing who goes there to destroy the process,” Dr Zaato noted.
On judicial processes, the senior lecturer also raised concerns about delays between court rulings and the publication of detailed judgments, arguing that such gaps fuel speculation and conspiracy theories.
“When judges give a ruling and then take months to release the reasons, it creates unnecessary pressure, tension and room for conspiracy theories,” he said.
Dr Zaato proposed that courts should, where possible, deliver rulings together with their full reasons, or clearly indicate the time needed to produce a complete judgment.
“If you release the ruling and the reasons at once, you dial down the tension and make it easier for everyone to move on,” he added.
He further called for stronger security and legal safeguards around collation centres, describing them as one of the weakest points in Ghana’s electoral system.
“We have reduced ballot box snatching, but we have not fortified collation centres. That is where the real problem is,” he stressed.
Dr Zaato warned that glorifying or tolerating attacks on collation centres could endanger electoral officers, observers and the public, ultimately undermining the credibility of elections.
“If we glorify this behaviour, it will unleash violence at collation centres and threaten lives, and in the end, render our elections not credible,” he concluded.
By Christabel Success Treve
