Author: Mats Utas

Polling station in Ussher Town under a billboard suggesting a different kind of vote

Yesterday I spent much of the day walking between polling stations: first in James and Ussher towns (downtown Accra) where things seemed to be working really well and then in Ashaiman. The latter location is a market town located close to the port of Tema. It contains of many poor settlements and had its share of violence during the last elections. At the first ten stations the voting was flowing smoothly and people were very satisfied. In the late afternoon I however visited several polling stations where the “machines”, as people said, had stopped functioning. The new biometric system requires electronic fingerprints for voters to vote and without a functioning finger print scanner they cannot vote. In some places people waited for hours with little information of when they could vote. Election functionaries in these locations knew little more than the voters and expressed great frustration over the “machines”. In one case the machine had simply frozen and could not be restarted, in the other cases they did not work after batteries had been replaced. One functionary told me that in all of Ashaiman they had just one spare fingerprint device and of all the defunct polling stations I visited none had gotten any technical support (in fact many voters thought that I was the technician that would fix their “machines”). At five o’clock when the polling stations were officially supposed to close voters and functionaries had still not received information of how to proceed. Only after dark they learnt that they would be allowed to vote the following day.

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I must say that I have been slightly disappointed with the political temperature in Accra. The few days I have spent in Accra have showed nothing like the political spirit of Sierra Leone, or even Liberia. But Wednesday turned out to be the real campaigning day in Accra and there was suddenly nothing wrong with elections frenzy and party spirit. Small rallies of supporters in party attire with banners and flags roamed downtown; a few groups of young men ran along the streets, but most of the campaigning takes place in caravans of cars, with supporters leaning out through the windows shouting party slogans and blowing vuvuzelas. Typically a group of motorbike riders would come first, driving at maximum speed, blowing their horns, ignoring traffic rules; at times against busy traffic on one-way streets. A posh car or two, and then tro-tro’s (minibuses) and taxis would follow. In the evening heads of parties and local MPs held meetings at various places and crisscrossed through town creating a joyful chaos. Supporters of the parties met up in friendly clashes where abusive language was used but violence was not in the air. Mockery is a common form of campaigning and a friend of mine saw a tro-tro driver in one of the NDC crowds stopping in the middle of the road just to throw himself on the ground with feet and hands up in the air. This act was with reference to an NPP meeting a few days ago in Kumasi when a stage broke down under the weight of presidential candidate Akufo-Addo and other NPP seniors who subsequently fell to the ground with hands and feet in the air. There is clearly room for comedy. Thursday has been much more quite with no real rallies, although lots of talks about politics. Friday is time to vote. Continue reading