TOP ECOWAS TEAM COMING - TO DISCUSS PROCESS TOWARDS PEACEFUL POLLS (Front Page) 14-08-08

Story: Kofi Yeboah

THE Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission is to dispatch a high-level mission to Ghana next month to engage all the political actors, civil society, the private sector and other partners in the electoral process in discussions towards a peaceful election in December.
The mission would be led by a former African Head of State, yet to be named, and would seek to facilitate a credible, transparent, free, fair and peaceful elections from all the actors.
The President of the ECOWAS Commission, Dr Mohammed Ibn Chambas, made this known in an exclusive interview with the Daily Graphic on Tuesday.
He said Ghana was one of the countries in West Africa that ECOWAS was holding up as a model of democratic governance and good economic performance. That was why it would not want to see anything happen in Ghana that would derail the positive achievements.
“We are particularly interested in Ghana because of the developments that we have seen this year in Kenya and, more recently, in Zimbabwe. These were countries that were touted as doing very well democratically and economically,” he said.
Dr Chambas said six months before President Mugabe initiated the land reform policy in Zimbabwe, that country was the best performing economy in Africa, according to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and yet everyone knew what was happening there now.
He did not name the African Head of State to lead the high-level mission, saying the commission was in the process of constituting the mission for the visit in the middle of next month.
The ECOWAS Commission President said the high-level mission would work closely with Dr Ishmael Yamson in an initiative he had put in place for a peaceful election in December.
Dr Chambas said ECOWAS was very much interested in electoral processes in the sub-region because there was often a cause or consequence of crisis in the sub-region.
Therefore, he said, whenever elections were coming up, the ECOWAS Commission showed particular interest and tried to work with the respective countries to ensure a peaceful, transparent and credible election.
On the recent limited voter registration exercise, Dr Chambas said ECOWAS was disappointed with the violence that characterised the event, albeit on a small scale.
“We are disappointed at what we saw. Here, there is a huge responsibility on the Electoral Commission to ensure that the process is credible and there is a level playing field for all the players to have confidence in the electoral process,” he said.
Dr Chambas, nevertheless, expressed confidence in the EC, whose officials he described as very capable to deliver its mandate.
He urged leaders of the political parties to be mindful of their actions and utterances between now and December, adding that they must understand the responsibility they carried to protect Ghana’s good name.
Dr Chambas said even in the face of vigorous political campaigning, the political party leaders “must tamper their utterances and moderate their language in a way that does not inflame or incite violence”.
Dr Chambas also reminded all Ghanaians that they were major stakeholders in the political process because they would be the most affected if the situation degenerated into violence.