You can’t leave fate of elections to parties – Political scientist to CSOs

Political science lecturer at the University of Ghana Dr Isaac Owusu Mensah has charged CSO’s in the country to team up in monitoring the upcoming elections if they are unable to raise funds.

His charge follows concerns put forward by the CSO’s that they will not be able to effectively monitor the 2020 polls due to funding challenges.

Speaking to Starr News, the senior lecturer appealed to the organizations to do more in securing funds arguing the business of monitoring elections cannot be left alone to political parties.

He said, “they can still team up with others who have the bigger resource so that they can come as a coalition, even though they already have one coalition, but others can also come together as coalition so that they can be able to monitor the election at the end of the day.”

“Because whether we like it or not we need their legitimacy to also promote the quality of the elections. We should not expect only the political parties to determine that the election is free and fair but we also need impartial arbiters like the CSO’s to come out to do that.”

He added, “so, it is very worrying that they claim that they don’t have enough resources because of the Covid-19 but I still think that it is still early in the day, they can still get some resources from other international bodies as well.”

“I also know because of the Covid-19 some of the international bodies have challenges and difficulties spending their money, but they should continue to explore more because we want them to monitor the elections at the end of the day.”