MONROVIA, Montserrado — As Liberia prepares to hold an election to see the first handover of power from one democratically elected leader to another since 1944, four civil society organizations have banded together to serve as local observers to the elections under the banner of the Liberia Election Observation Network.
The Federation of Liberian Youth, Liberia Crusaders for Peace, the Justice and Peace Commission, and the National Union of Organizations of the Disabled, with technical assistance from the Carter Center, have agreed to partner ahead of the October elections.
Speaking during the launch of the network at the headquarters of the Liberia Crusaders for Peace in Monrovia, the president of the Federation of Liberian Youth, Augustine Tamba, noted that the network is created to seek the protection and interests of the marginalized in society, especially women, the physically challenged, and the youth.
Tamba said it is important to ensure that people who often feel marginalized by the process are fully involved in the electoral process and feel that their interests are being considered.
“Involving young people ensures that their energies and talents are used to good effect and stops them from being instrumentalized for negative purposes,” he said. “Liberia is a country with [a] large disabled population, partly due to war, who feel that their needs are often overlooked in election processes where the need to ‘get the job done’ overtakes issues of inclusion.”
Tamba said the newly-formed network would monitor political party primaries, survey voter registration, monitor political party candidate nomination and complaints processes, and observe the July to October campaign period.
The network also plans to monitor how district electoral magistrates are planning for the election; moreover, observing activities on election day and during the post-election period would be key.
“We will achieve these objectives by running a network of 128 balanced long-term election observers in all of the 73 electoral districts of the country,” Tamba said. “Impartial observation of election process ensures transparency and can go [a] long way to build confident in the process and shed light on the reasons behind and prevalence of, any issues that emerge.”
The president of the Press Union of Liberia, Charles B. Coffey, was also present during the launch of the network, and he said the media would partner to ensure that Liberia had a peaceful transitional of power by continuing to create a platform for discussion on election-related issues that are of interest to the public.
At the same time, the Chairman Jerome Korkoya of the National Elections Commission thanked the Carter Center for supporting the initiative, stating, “We need the participation of such group in fostering our democracy.”
He pledged the commission’s support to the network but encouraged the observers to differentiate between observation and advocacy while doing their work.
“If observing a site and you realize that there’s something wrong, ask officials and know about the situation before [acting], I am speaking from experience from the past,” he said.
The Council of Chiefs and Elders, represented by Seetta Fofana Saah, encouraged the observers to also take the initiative to educate the population on how to vote to avoid the high number of invalid votes observed in the recently conducted by-election in Foya, Lofa.
Saah said the council is pleased with the ideas brought forth by the network of observers and welcomed it just as others who wished for a free, fair, and transparent election, “but in your advocacy and monitoring, you need to train or educate the local and rural people on voting, because it hurts when you take your time to go vote [for] a leader you believe in, then you know that it was not counted.”
Featured photo by Zeze Ballah
