‘Strengthen election monitoring capacities’

Page 15
June 18, 2009

THE United States Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Donald Teitelbum, has called for more support for civil society organisations to strengthen their capacity to monitor future elections.
Mr Teitelbaum, who made the call at the opening of the seventh international conference on Public Management, Policy and Development in Accra on Tuesday, said civil society groups had the potential to make a meaningful contribution towards smooth electioneering in the country.
The three-day event which is being attended by both local and foreign participants, is on the theme, “Transitional and sustainable approaches to improving development and administration”.
Mr Teitelbum commended the country for its conduct of yet another peaceful election, explaining that Ghana’s democratic progress was obvious to the world.
He said while Ghana had a lot to gain and learn from the US, alternatively America also had a lot to learn and gain from Ghana.
The Chief of Staff, Mr J.H. Newman, said he would like to see the management of “transitions better systematised and transparent to pre-empt members of the incoming and the outgoing administrations seeking to personalise or trivialise” such a vital process.
“The process of taking over of government had been fraught with major challenges, with National Democratic Congress (NDC) faithful impatient for a fast pace of work, while the New Patriotic Party (NPP) members wished that the transition period ended without any unpleasant actions befalling them,” he said.
The Executive Director of the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG), Dr Emmanuel Akwetey, stressed the need for the establishment of a transition commission to manage the transition from one government to another to minimise the problems associated with transitional processes in the country.
He said Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe were three countries which had identical election outcomes in recent times and said the margin of victory in the last elections in those countries was narrow, a situation which posed great challenges in the transition period.
Dr Akwetey said under that culture, the winner of the elections would want to put only its people in all the sectors and do away with the services of experts.
He, therefore, called for a review of the transitional rules to reflect the political dynamics of the 21st century.