By Rachel Kakraba
The National Peace Council has reiterated the need for the Electoral Commission (EC) to maintain frequent communication with stakeholders in the general election and the general public throughout the election process.
This, it believes, is critical to maintaining transparency in the polls, which goes a long way in promoting credible and peaceful electoral process.
Chairman of the National Peace Council, Rev. Ernest Adu-Gyamfi, was speaking at a news conference to officially launch an Election Situation Room, ESR, in Accra, which is being implemented by the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, WANEP, in partnership with the National Peace Council, NPC. It is designed to monitor, report, analyse, and facilitate responses to violent threats, contributing to the peaceful conduct of the general election.
The ESR, which will be operational from 6th to 8th December 2024, is running a centralised Election Situation Room in Accra, where observers who will use a checklist comprising 63 questions, divided into six forms monitoring the voting process within assigned areas, would be feeding them with information picked on the ground.
The ESR is funded by the European Union and the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, with complementary funding from the governments of Sweden, Austria, and the United Kingdom. It is an integral part of the Electoral Violence Monitoring, Analysis and Mitigation (E-MAM) project, which is designed to mitigate election violence in 12 West African countries through National Early Warning Systems.
Rev. Adu-Gyamfi, who doubles as Chairman of the Election Situation Room, ESR, asked the National Election Security Taskforce to continue to uphold the principles of neutrality, impartiality, and professionalism in the discharge of their duties. He also stressed the need for stakeholders, especially the youth and political parties, to be tolerant of each other in the entire electoral process.
Rev. Adu-Gyamfi pledged the commitment of the Election Situation Room to observing ethics, integrity, and transparency of the electoral process to prevent violence and human rights violations.
For her part, the Executive Director of WANEP, Levinia Addae-Mensah, explained that observers were selected based on an assessment of potential challenges that might arise during the polls. She added that their level of experience and familiarity with the local context were also key factors in the selection process.
“It is important to consider using locals, because they come with additional value in terms of local knowledge, which is important when you are trying to monitor and observe things because it helps you give a better perspective and understanding to the issue. We, of course, also pay particular attention to gender.”
She further stated, “The National Peace Council is a very strategic partner because the National Peace Council is also decentralized, and it’s made up of eminent persons who also understand those local contexts and dynamics, and so we use them just as an example, in addition to many other organisations that we work with, which we use as validators.”
Madam Addae-Mensah asked all eligible voters to maintain peace in the voting process in today’s general election.
“If you are eligible to vote and have registered to vote and you have done your part in terms of fulfilling all the conditions for voting, please go out there and vote as your right, but as you vote as your right, remember that we also have responsibilities to ensure that the electoral process is peaceful so that we can maintain the peace of the country.”
Five hundred and ten (510) accredited observers, including 319 observers from WANEP, have been deployed mainly to 276 priority “very high-risk” to “medium-risk” constituencies across Ghana’s 16 regions and 191 deployed by the NPC across all the regions.
