Ghana was on the global radar Friday as 14 million of its eligible voters trouped to the polls to elect a new president and 275 Members of Parliament.
In spite of the initial apprehension that the day would come with Armageddon, the exercise passed generally as free, fair and peaceful.
Earlier reports in the morning suggested the widespread late start of the exercise, raising doubts whether the exercise would turn out to be successful.
Indeed, there were reports of the late start in some polling centres due to the late arrival of polling materials and election officers and the breakdown of election equipment.
It appears that fears that some hoodlums would take the law into their hands were contained by the vigilance of the security agencies and the entire Ghanaian populace.
The electorate, while they struggled to find space at polling centres, did not take their eyes off election officials, polling agents, and security personnel superintending the exercise.
Everybody was vigilant and prepared to police the polls.
The Daily Graphic, however, thinks that the initial hiccups and challenges recorded at some polling stations across the country must have been due to complacency or sheer incompetence on the part of some officials of the Electoral Commission (EC).
The question on the lips of some Ghanaians is whether the country can continue to afford the luxury of the huge bureaucracy that is run on Election Day.
Some are even suggesting that Ghana must simply be paying the huge price for suspicion.
They explain that because the political actors are suspicious of each other, we have introduced expensive mechanism to try and police the polls such as the deployment of security personnel to the 26,000 polling centres and the engagement of polling agents, just to assure ourselves that there will be transparency during the polls.
In other jurisdictions, election officials simply rely on the integrity of the political actors and the vigilance of the electorate to safeguard the polls.
The paradox here is that although we lack the resources to run an efficient electoral process, we are the same people who engage in a huge bureaucracy on Election Day, forcing us to go cup in hand, begging for donor support for our elections.
The Daily Graphic thinks that if all the stakeholders, particularly the political parties and their supporters, as well as election officials, accept to play by the rules, we may not need an expensive bureaucracy to conduct our polls.
Whatever the challenges were, Ghana has once again registered its name on the map of countries with enviable democratic credentials.
The turnout was massive, and the electorate were prepared to endure any sacrifices to consolidate the country's democratic governance system.
Just as the voting was generally peaceful, free and fair, it is the hope of the DAILY GRAPHIC that the next stage of the declaration of the results will equally be peaceful.
Many otherwise democratic and economically strong countries have taken the path of failed states because of disagreement over election results.
We have great experiences to share on five elections already and we cannot afford to fail this time around.
It is within this context that we call on all the presidential candidates and their supporters to accept the verdict of the people.
Like sportsmen, they should accept defeat graciously and celebrate their victory with humility, so that even after one of the fiercest political contests in our history, we can still bond for the common good.
We congratulate all the presidential candidates on putting up a great contest and livening our political landscape, and all Ghanaians for demonstrating unity in diversity.
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