Managing Election- Relation Violence for Democratic Stability in Ghana Reference is made here to hate speech or negative political rhetoric which breed a climate of hatred and prejudice thereby undermining social peace and stability. A classic case in point epitomizing hate speech in political discourse leading to violence is the 1994 Rwandan genocide. While there had long been conflict between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority, the immediate context of the genocide was a campaign of hate speech against the Tutsi carried through the mass media 23 (Thompson, 2007; Gourevitch, 2008). The propaganda spurred the Hutu militias and populace to“kill the inyenzi(cockroaches)”, referring to Tutsi people; the result was an estimated 800,000 people(mostly Tutsi but including some moderate Hutu) 24 massacred within a 100-day period(Thompson 2007). Political rhetoric or utterances that spur violent action or antagonism need not be perceptibly insulting or vitriolic in nature to incite negative emotions or outcomes. They can be presented in other forms, sometimes subtle, and still produce similar effects. This can be seen in the behaviour of losing election candidates whose vehement statements contesting electoral outcomes can incite their followers to rebellion. Here, an example is the opposition candidate in Togo, Jean-Pierre Fabre who, following the March 2010 presidential elections, accused the official electoral agency, Commission Electorale Nationale Indépendante (CENI) of falsifying the results: I do not recognize the so-called victory of Faure Gnassingbé, I have never wanted to use violence, but if I am stolen from, I will not give up the fight. …We are going to stage protests; we are not going to take this lying down.(Newstime Africa, 2010) 25 23 The two main'Hutu Power' media that stoked the hatred and disseminated the hate speech propaganda were the Kangura magazine and its radio counterpart, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines(RTLM) 24 This number represented about 20 percent of the country's total population 25 Emphasis added by authors 108