Ahh Valentine's Day... love is all around us and so we go out into the streets to march against the government!
Not your average February 14th tradition? Well, Ghana is new to the game. It only took off after private radio was legalized in 1995, when stations started copying Western stations and doing Val Day promotions - and it's caught on quite well.
The reason for the protest is a new bill being introduced to Parliament by the ruling NPP. The bill would extend the vote to Ghanaians living abroad (which is good) but since there is no official list of Ghanaians abroad and no proper ID that they have to register with, the new law could make fraudulent voting much easier in elections (that being a bad thing). It also will cost a great sum of money for a developing country like Ghana. Besides, they are planning to introduce a new ID card in the near future (Ghanaian passports are easy to forge), so why not wait until the system will be able to handle this law? Crazyness...
So, about 5,000 people decked in red marched from Kwame Nkrumah Circle to Parliament, making lots of noise about their dissatisfaction with the government. Joe and I met up with Malik, the head of the student union at Legon and Ken, a former head himself.
The protest was pretty neat to see - it was the largest one I have been to here - but since the issue is so complex, most people there just shouted "We want peace!" and "Down with the NPP! Down with Kufour!" Given that it was organized by the opposition parties, they probably didn't seem to mind, but it definitely put off Joe.
All in all, it was a very neat experience. The last time I had seen any civil action in Accra was the Road to Hong Kong march last semester. While that one was small and highly organized, this one was huge and rather disorganized. Either way, we'll see what the result is in the upcoming days. And we'll see how the media reports the demonstration. (Note: there may or may not have been violent clashes by the end.)
Happy Val's Day, y'all.
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