Ghana Elections 2012 key social media platforms

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Kenya Elections : As polls loom, tensions mount in slums

After Kenya went to the polls five years ago, Victor Situma and his family were among some 600,000 people who fled their homes as, in many parts of the country, a bitter dispute over who had won the presidency degenerated into widespread inter-communal violence. His house and shop were looted and vandalized. In all, more than 1,500 people were killed.

Two years ago, he returned from his rural home in the western Kakamega District to Mathare, one of Nairobi's largest slums. But father-of-six Situma plans to move his family back west soon.

The next elections are due in March 2013. A raft of posts - from the presidency to ward representatives - is up for grabs. Candidates and parties tend to revolve not around policy but geographic region and, by extension, ethnicity. The run-up to the polls has already been marred by several incidents of violence [ http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96153/KENYA-Dozens-killed-in-Tana-River-clashes ].

"I will vote here in Nairobi because of my job. But I will take my family to western Kenya so that even if there is violence, I die alone. I don't see any guarantee that the election will be peaceful," he told IRIN.

"I don't know who will win the elections, but you can still be attacked, because politicians are already saying 'our people must get this post or another', but the poor people we live with here believe in what they say and will take their word for it," he added.

According to Olga Mutoro, policy and governance officer at the Peace and Development Network Trust (PeaceNet) [http://peacenetkenya.or.ke/ ], Situma's fears are far from uncommon.

"In the slums, suspicions among people from different ethnic communities are growing, and many are beginning to segregate according to their tribes in order to give themselves a sense of comfort" she told IRIN.

Rispa Wambui, 35, also no longer feels safe in Kibera, another major Nairobi slum, where she has lived with her family for 15 years.

"Many of my neighbours are not from [my] tribe, and I know whatever the outcome of the coming election, they might attack me. I don't want to wait for that to happen. I am looking for a house to rent in a place where my people are many. It is the only way I can feel safe," she said.

Foreshadowing violence

"We are witnessing pockets of violence across the country - much of it with political motives - and this could be a pointer to what the country might witness when electioneering moods set in properly," Saida Ali, executive director of the NGO Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW) [ http://covaw.or.ke ], told IRIN.

"People who live in informal settlements experience few security patrols, and many are also vulnerable to political manipulation due to their low economic status," she said.

According to government data, 71 per cent of Kenya's urban population lives in slums. "During the [2007-8] post-election violence, traditional myths about the existence of 'ancestral homelands' - considered to be binding to specific ethnic communities by blood - were transferred to Nairobi's suburbs and violently enforced," the Nairobi-based Peace Research Institute wrote in a recent report [ http://www.research.ihub.co.ke/uploads/2012/may/1337692783__986.pdf ].

"Ethnic identities were checked by vigilante groups at zone boundaries [in slums], inter-group clashes occurred mostly along such boundaries, and the slum-dwellers adjusted their daily movements with regard to the location of ethnic zones (e.g., by avoiding zones held by members of opposing ethnic communities)," the report added.

Gender-based violence

Experts say that as fears of electoral violence grow, so do fears of gender-based violence.

"Women bear the greatest burdens of violence, and this is what happened even in the 2007 and 2008 conflict," said Atsango Chesoni, the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, an NGO.

"It is during the elections that people take the opportunity to defile women," COVAW's Ali said.

Mutoro of PeaceNet says empowerment programmes are needed to help people ward off political manipulation.

"People need to be sensitized on national unity and, at the same time, given the skills to be able to address their grievances without necessarily finding comfort in their tribal groupings," Mutoro said.

credit :   http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=96966

Ghana Elections 2012 : The 3,000 voters in Kasena still cannot vote - Supreme Court Judge

The 3,000 people in the Kasena Nakana District who the Human Right Court ordered to be registered to take part in the upcoming elections can still not vote on Friday.

 

     This because the Regulation 9 (5) of CI 72 which deals with an individual's right to register and to vote indicates that the Electoral Commission (EC) is still prohibited from including in the voters register the name of the person who qualifies to register as a voter for an election but who registers less than sixty days to that election.

 

     This issue came to the fore when a five-member delegation from the African Union (AU) and ECOWAS Election Observer Mission led by General Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria on paid a courtesy called on the Chief Justice, Mrs Georgina Wood at his office in Accra.

 

    The delegation is in the country to observe Friday's general elections.

 

    The meeting between the Chief Justice and the group also offered them the opportunity to learn at first hand measures being put in place by the judiciary to resolve electoral disputes should they arise during the process.

 

    During the  discussion, Mr Musa Fatau, Director of Political Affairs, ECOWAS posed a question whether the short time left for the EC to register the 3000 people were going to be registered and added to the main register would not pose a problem to the whole electoral process.

 

    The Chief Justice, Mrs Georgina Wood said the 3,000 people cannot vote and even if they allowed to vote somebody can challenge that action in court.      

 

     Justice Sule Gbadegbe, Justice of the Supreme Court, who also commented on the issue said even if the 3,000 people were registered by the EC they still cannot vote because the duration of the date of registration and the voting date is less than sixty days.

 

    He said education on that aspect of the law would help inform the public on how one can register and qualify to exercise their voting rights during the elections.

GNA

African Election projects Deploys SMTC for Ghana 2012 Election

African Election Project @Penplusbytes, working with key partners; Georgia Institute of Technology, Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) and EnoughisEnough (EiE) Nigeria, with support from the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) is currently implementing  Ghana's first Social Media Tracking Centre (STMC) that will monitor the use of social media during Ghana's 2012 elections. The SMTC will provide a real time response mechanism on election irregularities, violence and other concerns by reaching out to key election stakeholders for immediate action.

 

According to Mr. Michael Ohene- Effah, Governance Advisor at DFID, "Ghana DFID welcomes and supports this ground-breaking social media tracking centre initiative. Its ability to 'sweep' all social media during the 2012 general elections will afford civil society, state authorities and development partners the opportunity to know in real time public opinions, sentiments and attitudes relayed through different social media platforms in order for relevant actions to be taken."

 

Although there are several media monitoring activities in the mainstream media surrounding Ghana's 2012 elections, there is currently only a handful and often inefficient manual tracking of elections trends taking place in the growing social media environment. The Social Media Tracking Centre (SMTC), therefore comes at an opportune time in addressing this challenge and ensuring an  efficient social media monitoring capability among key actors covering Ghana's 2012 elections.

 

The real-time data capturing ability of the SMTC will allow for up-to-the minute  tracking of incidents taking place in different areas around the country. Also the centre will collate, analyze and transmit as alerts  to relevant elections stakeholders' such  the  National Elections Security Task Force (NESTF),  civil society actors, the media and Electoral Commission of Ghana among others all important incidents for necessary action to be taken.

 

Jerry Sam, Project Director of African Elections Project(AEP)  reiterates the need for an SMTC, he says  "with the rising interest and increased use of social media as a channel of communication, interaction and networking by a rising number of Ghanaians  on  the Ghana elections, we expect that monitoring  social media powered by the SMTC  will serve as early warning mechanism thereby contributing significant  reduction of electoral violence while at the same time ensuring transparent and free elections. "

 

Editor's note:

 

African Elections Project (AEP) was established in 2008 with the vision of enhancing the ability of journalists, citizen journalists and the news media to provide more timely and relevant election information and knowledge while undertaking monitoring of specific and important aspects of governance. To date, we have covered elections in 11 African countries namely Ghana, Cote

d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mauritania, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana, Togo and Niger and Liberia.

 

 

Ends

international media - gh elections

jerry

what happen to our plans to reach out to the international media, guardian etc

 

I guess it went to the list of things that do not get done

 

 

let discuss and action it on monday

kwami