Stakeholders Want Rigorous Monitoring Of Elections
Stakeholders in the December general election have called for its rigorous monitoring to ensure that the polls are conducted in a free and fair atmosphere.
This, they pointed out, was necessary to further consolidate the country's democratic development as well as sustain the peace and stability Ghanaians were enjoying.
The call was made by the leadership of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG), the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEB) and the Electoral Commission (EC).
In separate interviews with the s they indicated that inasmuch as the country needed more local observers to reduce cost, it was equally important to have more international election observers in the country during the election.
According to the Administrator of the IEA, Mrs Jean Mensa, and the Executive Director of IDEG, Dr Emmanuel Akwetey, the stakes in the 2008 elections were high and, therefore, there was the need for different observer missions to monitor the exercise, since their presence in the country could go a long way to inspire international confidence in the elections.
Whilst Dr Emmanuel Akwetey maintains that the integrity of foreign observers could not be compromised as opposed to domestic observers although the use of domestic observers indicated a belief in the local system, Mrs Mensa thinks that there seems to be a lot of suspicion and mistrust from some of the political parties concerning the credibility of the elections following the alleged bloated voters' register of the Ashanti Region, a development she noted was a recipe for chaos.
Mrs Mensah said the IEA since 1996 had been training local monitors, stating that in 2004 it trained about 500 of them and stressed that it was in the interest of Ghanaians for the outcome of the election results to be accepted by all the contesting political parties, hence the need for more foreign observers in the country, since their judgement of the polls “carried weight”.
“In the 2004 elections we did not have international election observers but this time around they are very relevant to us,” she added.
She said what made the stakes high in this year's elections were that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) had each had the opportunity to govern the country for eight years and, therefore, whilst the NPP had resolved to retain power, the NDC also seemed to be positioning itself to recapture power after eight years in opposition.
For his part, Mr Emmanuel Bombande, the Executive Director of WANEB, believed that the presence of foreign monitors did not only guarantee a free and fair election but went a long way to smoothen the electoral process.
He added that it was important for local observers to have the capacity to monitor the polls although they could not necessarily replace their foreign counterparts.
The Chairman of the EC, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, said the more foreign and domestic observers the country had, the better the credibility of the electoral process.