Which station should call the prez election?

We have six days to go to the polls to elect a president and 275 members of parliament. Thus next week by this time, a good number of election results would be in. If we are lucky, we shall have an idea of who our president would be; but for sure we shall know many of those who have made it to parliament and many whose dreams to be parliamentarians have been dashed.

The gloves are all off now and it is no child’s play in campaign land. Every single party and candidate is throwing the proverbial kitchen sink at the other to ensure that their messages get to the people they wish to communicate with.

Even with one week to the elections and, in spite of trying many of them, the parties still have a few of the tricks in books left to unleash on their opponents to try and see how they will jolt them and in the process sway the few whose minds are not made up to their side.

Over the weeks that the campaign period has been very hectic, the radio and television stations have also been pitching to their listeners and viewers what they would be doing on Election Day. All of them have given a reason why they should be the choice for authentic election related news before, during and after December 7.

All over the country on Election Day, many journalists and broadcasters will be going around to sniff out news on the happenings from polling stations, collation centres, district and regional offices of parties and EC and many other places where news about the election would be sourced.

Radio is the most ubiquitous media in the country and many people will get their election news from there. The over 300 radio stations strewn across the length and bread of the country will very busy on that day.

There will be analysis of the votes on major stations across the country as the results from the polling stations and collation centres start to come in. There will be those who will make predictions of where the voting will go based on early results who will get it right and those who will also get it wrong.

Just as people know which party they will be voting for on Wednesday, they also know which radio stations and television channels they will be glued to in order to get their election information. People will tune in just for that.

Over the years, since Komla Dumor pioneered calling of election results in 2000, many have looked forward to hearing which candidate won the presidential election even, before the Electoral Commission officially announces the winner.

Many civil society organisations and some political parties and politicians, depending on whether they are on the losing end of the calling, have called for this to stop and that the EC should be left alone to declare results. They say it has potential to bring chaos in the body politic.

This is a position I disagree with. We have come a long way as a democracy, even if we are still not very mature, and I believe that we should know the difference between calling an election and declaring election results.

The fact that a radio or TV station has called the election in favour of one candidate, based on results from the collation centres, does not mean that the national Returning Officer, the EC Chair cannot call it in favour of another based on the information they have.

At the end of the day it is only one person and one institution for that matter which is mandated to declare election results. That however does not preclude the fact that a media organisation cannot call it ahead of the declaration and I would love to see that happen again.

Having said that, I think it is also important to note that not all radio or TV stations would be taken seriously by many people if they call the results in favour of a particular candidate or a particular political party.

For instance, what capital should a listener in Accra place on a Radio Gold or Montie FM calling the election on behalf of Candidate John Mahama or Net 2 TV and Oman FM calling it in favour of Candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo? Perhaps it would be a tad believable if the latter stations called it in favour of the former candidate or the former stations called it in favour of the latter candidate.

The point here is that we would love to encourage calling elections as part of deepening our election reporting and commentary, however even as we do that we would need to know how unbiased that would be and how seriously we should take any such declaration.

The crux of this, in my humble view, is that the EC is likely to have an uphill task declaring the winner of the election if he is not who his/her favorite radio or TV station called it for than if it was called by a medium considered to be in the middle. If their station said their candidate has won, it will be as good as the gospel to party faithful and it will make the EC’s work difficult.

Thus we encourage calling the elections, but we also encourage care in whipping up passions of party supporters to create chaos in the country. If anybody remembers, we came very close to pushing this country into conflagration after Tain in 2008 and we should not get anywhere close to that point again.

This being my last piece before the 2016 General Elections, let me urge you to take up your civic responsibility by voting and even more than that do not allow yourself to be used by politicians or the devil to cause disaffection. Vote and go home and start listening to the radio or following up on social media and when it is due, listen to the station likely to call it.

I wish you all successful voting, if ever there was such an expression.