ECOWAS observation team hopeful of successful polls in Liberia

Members of the ECOWAS observation team

ECOWAS observation team hopeful of successful polls in Liberia
Rebecca Mu’azu, Monrovia

The Head of the ECOWAS Election Observation Mission to Liberia, Professor Attahiru Jega, has expressed optimism that the country’s October 11 Presidential and legislative polls will be successful.

The 150-member team says from the level of preparations and observations, it believes Liberia is on course for a successful election.

Professor Jega, Chairman of Nigeria’s Independent Electoral Commission told newsmen in Monrovia after visiting the office of Liberia’s National Elections Commission, Mr. James Fromayan, that the indications were positive from what he had seen on ground ahead of the polls.

Pledge

The Head of the ECOWAS Observation Mission described his appointment by the ECOWAS as a great honour and privilege and pledged the commitment of the team to handling the assignment with dignity, impartiality and diligence.

Speaking after receiving Professor Jega and the ECOWAS Commission’s President, Ambassador James Victor Gbeho, Mr. Fromayan thanked ECOWAS and Member States for their financial, technical and logistical support towards successful elections in Liberia.

The ECOWAS Observation team will be deployed to monitor the polls across Liberia, Africa’s first republic with an estimated population of four million people and 1.7 million registered voters.

Election schedule

Under the election time-table, the announcement of the final results of the presidential elections is fixed for October 26, 2011 and possible run-off on November 8, 2011.

Some sixteen candidates are contesting for the presidency, including the incumbent President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who was elected Africa’s first female president in 2005.

Meanwhile, the President of ECOWAS Commission, Ambassador Gbeho, has called on members of the ECOWAS Election Observation Mission to see themselves as neutral and impartial umpires and ambassadors of democracy.

“As you get ready to deploy to various parts of the country, I wish to remind us about the distinction between running an election and observing an election and the need to show your best sides to all sides”, the president told the observers at a special briefing at the City Hall in Monrovia.

Significance of the elections

He emphasized that the elections were of tremendous interest not only to ECOWAS but also to the international community and within the context of the regional organization’s determined efforts to entrench democracy and good governance in West Africa.

President Gbeho, accompanied by General Obeng and Professor Jega, also visited the office of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), where the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, Madam Ellen Margarethe Løj, assured him of the UN system’s readiness to support the electoral process.

Ekata