Obersver Group Declares Confidence -Augustine Ali Sozah

Jan 12, 2013 Samuel Uncategorized 0

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A 13-member Commonwealth observer group which is was the Ghana to observe the elections has expressed confidence in Ghana’s ability to pull off another success.

The Group which has already met with some political parties, including the NDC, the NPP, the CPP and the PPP, as well as some civil society groups and Commonwealth foreign missions in the country, says the various bodies have also pledged their confidence in the Electoral Commission (EC).

Their Chair of the group, Dr. Bethuel Pakalitha Mosisili, at a media briefing in Accra, said Ghana had always got it right by investing in timely interventions such as ensuring that the elections were conducted every four years, as required, as well as putting in place other measures, including the recently held Kumasi Peace Accord, to ensure peaceful elections.

The Commonwealth has a long tradition of support for elections in Ghana, including observing the 2008 polls. The group has been in the country since November 30 and is expected to leave by December 14, 2012.

We are encouraged by and wholeheartedly support the recent peace accord signed by the political leaders and various civil society groups and community leaders for peaceful elections,he said.

Dr. Mosisili, who is a former Prime Minister of Lesotho, said, “We call on all political parties and stakeholders to play their roles responsibly, live up to their pronouncements and adopt a constructive approach to the entire electoral process in order to ensure peaceful polls.

The group declared “our task as the Commonwealth Observer Group is to consider all the factors impinging on the credibility of the electoral process as a whole and assess whether the election have been conducted according to the standards for democratic elections to which Ghana has committed itself, with reference to its own election-related legislation, as well as relevant regional, Commonwealth and other international Commitments,”.

Dr. Mosisili, who is presently a Member of Parliament in Lesotho’s opposition Democratic Congress Party, also said “in conducting our duties and understanding our assessment, we will be impartial, objective and independent”.

Stressing that, “We are here in our individual capacities as eminent Commonwealth citizens; the assessment by the group will be its own, and not that of any member government,”

He said the elections were an opportunity to make Ghana, Africa and, indeed, the Commonwealth proud and pledged the unwavering solidarity of the Commonwealth to the country.

The group comprises Mr. Shahed Akhtar, a diplomat from Bangladesh; Ms Rochelle Lasley, a lawyer from Barbados; Mrs. Josephine Tamai, the Chief elections officer of Belize; Justice Tom Foulds of the Ontario Court of Justice in Canada and Dr. Joseph Misoi of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) in Kenya.

Others are Ms Koki Muli Grinon, an elections expert from Kenya; Mr. Alberto Francisco Manhique of the Electoral Observatory in Mozambique; Dr Emmanuel Terwar Akem, the Director of the National Electoral Commission, Nigeria; Ms. Cynthia Barrow-Giles, a member of the Constitutional Reform Commission at the University of the West Indies in St. Lucia; Mr. Vuyisile Sikelela Hlatshwayo, the director of the Swaziland-based Media Institute of Southern Africa; Mr. Max Marshall Caller, the Chairman of the Local Government Boundary Commission fro England, and Mrs. Priscilla Isaac of the Electoral Commission of Zambia.

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