Wednesday, 20 November

Dec. 7 polls: Enforce laws to prohibit vote buying, abuse of incumbency – CODEO to law enforcement agencies

Politics
CODEO is the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers

The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) has called "on all stakeholders, especially the law enforcement agencies, to enforce laws that prohibit vote buying and abuse of incumbency".

The trend, CODEO observed "contributes to uneven playing grounds for all presidential and parliamentary candidates ahead of the election".

This was contained in CODEO's press statement dated November 18, 2024, and signed by its National Coordinator, Albert Kofi Arhin.

The presser was titled 'CODEO calls on election stakeholders to intensify civic and voter education, stop vote-buying, abuse of incumbency and maintain peaceful and issuebased campaigns ahead of the December 7 elections'.

"CODEO is pleased to share this second report from its observation of the pre-election environment ahead of the December 7, 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections of Ghana. This report, which covers the period October 26 - November 8, 2024, is part of CODEO’s comprehensive observation of the up-coming elections. The findings presented here are based on weekly observation reports filed by 97 CODEO Long-Term Observers (LTOs) from 97 constituencies across all regions of the country. A total of 193 weekly reports filed by these observers during the reporting period were analyzed for this report," the statement opened.

CODEO summurised its findings, thus:

* Observed improvement in voter education efforts by the Electoral Commission of Ghana.

* Continuous domination of the political campaign scene by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

* Differential focus on issues in the campaigns by the NPP and the NDC.

* A generally peaceful political climate in the observed constituencies.

* Instances of incumbency abuse including the use of state resources such as public vehicles and government-owned equipment for campaign purposes were noted.

Peruse CODEO's report in its entirety below:

Source: classfmonline.com/Prince Benjamin