By Rachel Kakraba
The West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), in conjunction with the National Peace Council (NPC), will on Friday, 6th December, 2024, launch the Election Situation Room (ESR), which will monitor the electoral processes to, among other things, promote a peaceful, transparent, and credible 2024 general election.
The Election Situation Room will have eleven satellite situation rooms in eleven regions across the country that will be working collaboratively with Accra to monitor reports and also analyse and facilitate responses to some of the threats that come up.
Regional Coordinator for Research, WANEP, Dr. Festus Kofi Aubyn, made this known in an exclusive interview with GBC NEWS, on the Uniiq Breakfast Drive. He said the ESR is designed as an early warning mechanism to pick up early warning signs for analysis for further action.
“The whole system is designed like an early warning and early response. What basically happens is that if there’s any issue happening in any of the polling stations, our observers report it to the situation room, and then based on the analysis that is made, the decision room, which is made up of the eminent personalities from the Peace Council, will then look at the issue, look at the institutions involved.
Adding on, “If it’s the Electoral Commission or the police, they will quickly talk to them, either through phone calls or visits, to really get them to respond to the issue quickly so that it can avert any possible violence or tensions.”
Dr. Aubynn explained that the Situation Room will have five chambers, with the first known as the Decision Room, comprising Eminent Personalities.
“In terms of the structure of the Situation Room, we have five different chambers. The first chamber is what we call the decision room, which is made up of the eminent personalities who take the response actions. Then we have those who are also doing the analysis based on the information that we are receiving from our observers who have been deployed.
He added, “We have those who are also gathering the data; we call them data gatherers, and we have a communication team that is also monitoring the media landscape to deal with some of the issues that are not being covered by our observers. And we have a fact-checking team as well that is looking at issues of misinformation and disinformation.
Dr. Aubyn said more than five hundred observers have been trained and deployed to especially high-risk constituencies.
“We are not deploying to every constituency. What we have done is what we call hotspot mapping, where we have mapped all the 276 constituencies across the country and categorised them into high-risk areas, medium-risk areas, and also low-risk areas. And so where we are deploying observers is to the high-risk areas where we think that there is a possibility of incidents happening so that whatever happens there, we can put preventive measures to avert it.
He said the ESR will begin to receive information from its observers immediately after the official launch today.
Dr. Aubyn indicated that there will be a series of press conferences at each stage to inform the public of the electoral process.
He urged Ghanaians to participate in tomorrow’s polls peacefully, emphasising the importance of maintaining Ghana’s stability and harmony.
The Election Situation Room serves as a mechanism for mitigating election violence through preventive actions.
