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The theology of the judgement day is not in doubt; to believers, it is as irrefutable as the very foundations of the faith. So it is in our case: the Lord, or shall we say, His Lordship will sit in the heavenly heights surrounded by the celestial hosts (eight of them) and pronounce judgement from on high. As the Quran makes it clear in the quote above, after the judgement �some faces will be radiant, laughing and rejoicing; some faces will be dust-covered, overcast with gloom�� The Bible agrees: His Lordship will use every word spoken � careless or otherwise � to justify or condemn amid weeping and gnashing of teeth; (Matthew 13:42). Of course no one except that Father knows the date of judgement, but we know that August 29 is the date of our mini-judgement day, and instead of the sign of Jonah and the whale, our mini-judgement day will be telecast live with many replays. Unlike the judgement day of the Quran, the overcast faces of the August 29 losers should not be dust-covered for too long because ultimately, all Ghanaians are anxious that judgement day passes peacefully and that any weeping or gnashing of teeth be short-lived so that victory will belong to all the people. So according to the hoped-for scenario, the judgement is delivered, the winner gloats peacefully, the loser gnashes his teeth peacefully and we all live happily ever after. Of course it won�t be quite like that. Radio will catch fire, newspapers will blaze and blazon, commentators will comment and the national association of serial callers will have a field day like none other in our history. Remember, this is a one-sport nation and the sport is politics, so this judgement day is the day the Lord hath made for a nation for whom talking is a national hobby. However, we all hope that all the talks will not lead to anything that will raise voices. In the last few weeks, the nation has gone into the peace mode with every association, organisation, traditional ruler, men and women of God; in short, all Ghanaians, calling for peace. However, the one iron-clad condition for peace is the absolute neutrality of the security services. On that there can be no compromise; if the security services lean upon one side against the other they and they alone will be responsible for anything untoward that happens on and after judgement day. Happily, we have read and heard the resolute determination of the security apparatus to nip any unpleasant activity in the bud with equal fervour. However, if the security services are to protect us from harm we must support them in whatever way we can and must, especially those who work in the media. So, judgment day passes peacefully and then what? You don�t need to be a prophet to foresee a lot of chest-thumping, back-slapping and general assertion of the myth that this long drawn out election petition process has enhanced our democracy. The truth is that it has done nothing of the sort. It has been an unhelpful distraction at a time when we needed all our wit to deal with other pressing issues. To put it bluntly, it would have taken us nearly one year, including the post-Mills campaign period to elect a president � that is if there are no further challenges after next Thursday. But let me state clearly that we should not blame the petitioners for initiating their action or the judiciary for hearing it, but we should explore other ways of reaching the same conclusion. The surest way to achieve this is to reset the rules and clear any ambiguities so that we all understand precisely what those rules say and are meant to achieve. The real enemy this nation faces post-judgement day is complacency borne out of self-satisfaction. There are a number of constitutional and political tasks to perform and some of them are rather urgent. For example, no matter the outcome of the case we have to ensure that this nation does not go through such an ordeal again. This means we have to improve election procedures to make them foolproof in all areas; from registration to declaration of results. This could mean re-arranging the election timetable to provide for a longer transition period between election and swearing in so that challenges and petitions can be disposed of before the president is sworn in. Clearly, we should be able to do this because it may make for better justice and governance. One of those urgent constitutional and political tasks is to sort out the election of district authorities. At the moment, the farce of insisting that local elections are non-partisan is an insult to the nation, and the selection of district chief executives by the President and their murky confirmation process undermines our democratic claims. The bitterness of losing elections at the central government level would be reduced if parties had the opportunity to win other executive positions elsewhere in the country. The principle of winner-takes-all which has become the hallmark of our governance has a lot to answer for the destabilising role of party politics in our lives. Most people believe that the winner-takes-all is the only framework for electing our representatives and state officials but it is one of several and its sharp edges are often blunted by power-sharing arrangements that affirm instead of negating democracy, which are however absent from our system. This long drawn-out petition hearing may have given enormous pleasure to those who enjoy politics as an armchair sport, but to most of us it may all have been too much. For one thing, we may not have commented on the actual financial cost of this whole exercise but this must be one of the most expensive litigations in our history. It may be that most of the lawyers are not charging their usual rates but consider the cost of hiring scores of top-notch lawyers for this length of time, and their researchers and assistants; consider the cost of engaging the entire judicial machinery; consider the cost to those involved in other cases that may have been pushed aside as judges and lawyers prioritised this petition and it all adds up into six figures or more. And let us not forget that the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) raised a loud howl at the opportunity cost of its live transmission in the form of lost advertising revenue� It must be on all our lips to say: There has to be other ways� However much we may be prompted by this case to look again at our electoral machinery, I suggest that we can do no worse than re-examine the whole constitutional framework. In 1992 the new constitution of the Fourth Republic may have seemed ideal for our immediate needs but 21years later, we have to ask whether we still feel that the supreme document of the land serves our purposes in all directions. The Constitution Review Commission has done its job within its mandate but the recommendation here is to do a much larger enquiry which seeks to match expectations against performance. It would be extremely difficult to convince almost anyone that this re-imagining of Ghana would be worthwhile but perhaps with a bit of luck, going on the narrow path past judgement day with both radiant and dust-covered faces, may do the trick and persuade the Ghanaian elite that there is another way; perhaps a better way.