Mr Mark Woyongo, outgoing Minister of the Interior, on Friday called for decent political campaigning to ensure peaceful elections in the November 7, presidential and parliamentary elections.
He said political leaders must try to bring a lot of decorum in their campaigns and watch their language.
Mr Woyongo made the call when members of the ECOWAS Community Development Programme (CDP) Ghana Media Network called on him to introduce the group.
The network is a group that advocates free trade and free movement of people within the West African sub region in line with ECOWAS vision 2020.
The vision aims at translating the ECOWAS from an organisation where political leaders move freely into a reality where citizens within the sub-region move freely.
Mr Woyongo said there is the need for the promotion of peace before, during and after the elections “because we were and we will continue to be with elections”.
“Ghana should not be disintegrated because of elections, Ghana should rather be strengthened because of elections, “he said urging the media to be major promoters of peace in the country
“The media have a powerful tool to make sure we do not go that way, I am sure the media also need peace to operate.”
He asked the media to avoid provocative and unsubstantiated comments.
On regional integration, Mr Woyongo said there is the need to put a premium on regional integration issues since “no nation can go all alone.”
He commended the CDP media network for its advocacy on regional integration, saying, “in unity lies strength and its always better working together”.
Mr Woyongo also expressed concern about social media platforms, noting that people spew a lot of lies on social media and that should attract the attention of the media organisations to probably do something about it.
“We need to make the social media platforms a medium of decent communication and we must all put our heads together on this to see if we can sanitize such platforms,” he said.
