CODEO launches campaign of monitoring political parties

The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) on Wednesday launched a campaign to monitor the pre-election activities of political parties and the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) exercise.

Prof Justice V.C.R.A.C. Crabbe, former Chair of the Electoral Commission and Co-Chair of the CODEO, announced this at the launch of the USAID sponsored project in Accra.

CODEO, made up of 36 secular and faith-based civil society organizations, has independently observed every election in Ghana since 2000 and it is a Coalition dedicated to promoting free, fair and transparent elections through non-partisan election observation.

Prof Justice Crabbe said from March 24th to May 7th CODEO will deploy 650 field observers to scientifically sample polling stations across the country adding that “ CODEO with the technical assistance of the Center Democratic Development (CDD), has developed a BVR checklist, prepared a training manual and sampled the 650 polling stations that will be monitored.”

“From the data that will be gathered from the BVR observation, CODEO will produce two baseline reports that will form the basis for other interventions and future advocacy activities. These reports would also be shared with the media and the Ghanaian public,” he said.

Prof Justice Crabbe, who is a former Supreme Court Justice, said CODEO will undertake the Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) method of observing elections, complemented by the traditional observation on Election Day.

For these activities, he said, the Coalition will recruit, train and deploy 4,000 observers including 1,200 Rapid Response Observers and whiles the regular observers will provide general reports on the elections at their polling stations, the rapid response observers will in addition to their regular monitoring duties, use SMS technology to transmit results from their polling stations to the CODEO Information Center to feed our parallel vote tabulation database.

Prof Justice Crabbe said the parallel tabulation exercise, which was sufficiently tested in 2008, would equip CODEO with adequate information to confidently verify the 2012 presidential results.

Prof Emmanuel Gyimah Boadi, Executive Director of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), said transparency and fairness was the key drivers of election peacefulness and credibility.

He said CODEO was poised to play its part in the prosecution of a national agenda to achieve yet other peaceful and credible polls in 2012 as it has been doing since 2000, adding that “this gathering is to unveil to the general Ghanaian public series of interventions CODEO has advocated for support in the coming elections.”

Prof Boadi said CODEO has enjoyed the cooperation and support of the Electoral Commission, National Commission for Civic Education, Security services, and the Media and Development partners who share the same goal of ensuring the will of the people of Ghana prevailed in Ghanaian elections.

He expressed his appreciation to USAID and the United Kingdom Department for International Development (UK Aid) who are generously funding CODEO 2012 election support programs.

Prof Boadi noted that election 2012 provides yet another opportunity to consolidate Ghana’s electoral credibility and peacefulness, and strengthen the country’s reputation as a beacon of hope for Africa democracy. **