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EC urges government not to abuse incumbency
Accra, April 10, GNA – Dr. Kwadwo
Afari-Gyan, Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), on
Thursday urged the government not to abuse its incumbency
in Election 2008 but rather create an enabling environment
for a free, fair and transparent poll.
He said any flagrant abuse of incumbency by the governing
party at any stage of the electoral process could create the
grounds for dispute and mar the transparency of the whole
elections.
“To ensure that the EC plays its electoral role effectively
for public acceptance of the results of both the
presidential and parliamentary elections, the government
must provide the Commission with the needed resources
timely,” Dr Afari-Gyan added at the launch of a book on the
Framework for Domestic Election Observation (DEO) in Accra.
The 18-page booklet seeks to provide DEO an intimate
knowledge on the electoral process, outline the role of DEOs
in observation and monitoring, with particular focus on what
to observe, actions on the ground and interpreting the facts
in a professional manner.
The booklet was compiled and printed by the EC in
collaboration with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation (FES)
and KAB Government Consult.
Dr Afari-Gyan noted that apart from the government
adequately providing the needed resources, the other
principal democratic stakeholders - the EC, media, political
parties, donor communities and the security agencies - must
also be committed to their constitutional responsibilities
towards achieving credible elections whose results were
incontrovertible.
“The electorate must register and vote only once, and they
must not prevent others from doing the same; the political
parties and candidates must carry out clean campaigning,
devoid of violence and intimidation,” he said.
“The media must report political events and other happenings
accurately, as a means of helping the electorate to make
informed choices and the security agencies must adopt a
stance of zero tolerance to election-related violence,
irrespective of its source,” the EC Chairman stated.
He assured all stakeholders that the Commission would carry
out its activities in a professional manner and also ensure
that the observation of those activities was done in the
same way.
Dr Afari-Gyan advised political parties to recognize that an
election was a process and not a single event that involved
major activities from constituency demarcation through voter
registration, candidate selection, nomination of candidates,
campaigning to the actual conduct of the election, counting
and collation of votes, and declaration of results.
“The EC therefore on its own cannot adequately mediate
electoral contests effectively as whatever transpires at
each of these stages has the potential of influencing the
eventual outcome of the elections.”
On the role of DEO, the EC Chairman said the first
responsibility was to gather facts which referred to
verifiable happenings, and not opinions or what somebody
alleged to have happened and to adequately interpret the
facts for the purpose of making informed judgement about the
election.
“Ultimately the judgement that the observer group is
required to make is whether or not, on the whole the
election went well. Making such judgment is not always easy.
“In all likelihood, an observer group will notice
irregularities of one kind or the other in relation to an
election.
“The group must then judiciously assess the ways in which
the irregularities might have affected the eventual outcome
of the elections.”
Dr. Afari-Gyan also identified three key advantages of DEOs
over their foreign counterparts, as the domestic observation
is less costly and leads
to the recruitment of more observers.
DEOs are also suitable to a long-term observation of the
electoral process and intimate knowledge of the local
situation.
Mr. Laary Bimi, Chairman of the National Commission for
Civic Education (NCCE), who chaired the launch, said the
essential requirements for elections were for its outcome to
be accepted and to be devoid of suspicions and in some cases
violence.
He noted that with the introduction of the DEO framework
election observers would know the rules and regulations that
governed the electoral process.
“We have held elections since 1992 and we cannot say that we
are 100 per cent perfect in the outcome of elections and
whatsoever imperfections there were the Ghanaian citizenry
did not resort to violence,” he said.
Mr Kwadwo Sarfo Kantanka, Deputy Chairman of EC in Charge of
Operations, described the booklet as a goldmine for
electoral observation and as it offered a new knowledge and
understanding on the guidelines as well as the application
of rules in electoral observation.
He added that the EC’s main objective was to promote
democracy and organize a free and a fair election and
therefore the Framework was a contribution towards
eradicating violence and consolidating democracy.
GNA
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