{"id":49356,"date":"2012-10-29T20:51:10","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T20:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=49356"},"modified":"2012-10-29T20:51:10","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T20:51:10","slug":"electoral-chiefs-agree-action-plan-to-improve-electoral-process-in-ecowas-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=49356","title":{"rendered":"Electoral chiefs agree action plan to improve electoral process in ECOWAS region"},"content":{"rendered":"

West Africa\u2019s election management bodies have agreed an Action Plan to improve\u00a0electoral processes to facilitate the conduct of free, fair, transparent and\u00a0credible elections and deepen democracy in the region.\u00a0 (Photo<\/em>: \u00a0Dr. Christiana Thorpe of Sierra\u00a0Leone, elected President Coordinating Committee)<\/em><\/p>\n

In a two-page Communiqu\u00e9 at the end of their 3rd Annual General Meeting in Abuja\u00a0on Wednesday 24th October 2012, the Network of Electoral Commissions in West\u00a0Africa (ECONEC) explained that the Action Plan seeks among other things, to\u00a0improve the legal and institutional environments for conducting elections in the\u00a0region.<\/p>\n

It is also aimed at improving the contributions of Electoral Management Bodies\u00a0(EMBs) to the resolution of problems associated with electoral processes, the\u00a0role of EMBs in post-election period and the improvement of the management of\u00a0such bodies.<\/p>\n

During the meeting, the electoral chiefs reviewed recent elections in the region\u00a0and exchanged views and experiences on the roadmap for improvement of future\u00a0elections.<\/p>\n

The meeting also elected a new Coordinating Committee to pilot ECONEC\u2019s affairs\u00a0for the next two years. The new Committee has Dr. Christiana Thorpe of Sierra\u00a0Leone as President <\/strong>(in photo)<\/strong>, General Siaka Sangane (Mali) as 1st Vice-President, Dr.\u00a0Manuel Gomez Miranda (Cape Verde) as 2nd Vice-President, Madam Lea Hounkpe\u00a0(Benin) as Treasurer, and Mr. Camaa Louseny (Guinea) as Deputy Treasurer.<\/p>\n

The new team replaces the pioneer Coordinating Committee headed by Mr. Moussa\u00a0Michel Tapsoba of Burkina Faso, and the first Vice-President Ben Sekou Sylla of\u00a0Guinea, both of whom died last year. The meeting observed a minute\u2019s silence for\u00a0the two late ECONEC officials as well as the late Chairman of Guinea-Bissau\u2019s\u00a0Electoral Commission Mr. Desejado Lima Da Costa.<\/p>\n

In his key note address to the meeting, the Vice-President of the ECOWAS\u00a0Commission, Dr. Toga Gayewea McIntosh, underscored the centrality of the\u00a0independence, professionalism, fairness and integrity of EMBs to the collective\u00a0efforts to nurture democratic culture in West Africa.<\/p>\n

He noted that \u201cas the principal arbiters in electoral processes, EMBs can decide\u00a0the fate of a nation between war and peace,\u201d adding that \u201celectoral disputes,\u00a0often provoked by the refusal of losing candidates to accept the verdict of the\u00a0ballot box or poor management of electoral processes, constitutes one of the key\u00a0triggers to the cycle of instability that the region has witnessed over the last\u00a0two decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

He therefore, urged ECONEC to equip its new leadership with the appropriate\u00a0strategic work plan designed to address both the capacity needs of EMBs and\u00a0structural challenges that negatively affect electoral processes.<\/p>\n

In his welcome address, the Chairman of Nigeria\u2019s Independent Electoral\u00a0Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, said that \u201cadapting the tested practices\u00a0of sister EMBs and avoiding their mistakes not only saves us from trying to re-invent the wheel as it were, but it also saves us valuable resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Acting head of the ECOWAS electoral unit, Mr. Francis Oke, who provided a\u00a0background of the meeting on behalf of the ECOWAS Director of Political Affairs,\u00a0Dr. Abdel-Fatau Musah, explained that between the end of 2010 and November 2011,\u00a0elections were held in Guinea, Burkina Faso, Cote d\u2019Ivoire, Niger, Benin,\u00a0Nigeria, Cape Verde, Liberia, the Gambia, and Senegal in March 2012. ECOWAS\u00a0deployed election observers to all the countries expect the Gambia.<\/p>\n

Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Sierra Leone and Ghana are scheduled to conduct elections\u00a0between 2012 and 2013.<\/p>\n

The ECONEC, established in 2008 brings together the Chair and vice-Chair persons\u00a0of Election Commissions of ECOWAS Member States as well as high-ranking experts\u00a0in electoral matters and officials of international institutions that support\u00a0democracy.<\/p>\n

The current meeting was sponsored by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa\u00a0(OSIWA), which was represented by its Political Governance Programme Manager,\u00a0Mr. Mathias Hounkpe.<\/p>\n

Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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West Africa\u2019s election management bodies have agreed an Action Plan to improve\u00a0electoral processes to facilitate the conduct of free, fair, transparent and\u00a0credible elections and deepen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[751,1],"tags":[1192,13896,1219],"class_list":["post-49356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-news","category-uncategorized","tag-dr-christiana-thorpe","tag-econec","tag-ecowas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}