As Ghana goes to the polls tomorrow, the demand to ensure transparent, free, fair, inclusive and peaceful elections, had compelled the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) to deploy 4,400 observers across the country.

CODEO to fairly cover the election, would have a total number of 4000 observers present at polling stations located in all the 275 constituencies across the 16 regions. And, out of this number, 1502 have been deployed as Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) Observers.

The Acting Chair of CODEO, Shiekh Arimaywo Shaibu briefing the media today, December 6, 2020, said this initiative have been necessitated by the fact that although the country has made tremendous gains since 1992 in improving the conduct of elections, there is still a challenge mistrust and mutual suspicion among major stakeholders.

He added that this challenge continue to persist even in the 2020, despite this year’s election being conducted in an extraordinary circumstance with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hitherto, he state that it was imperative that the democratic right of exercising one’s franchise is conducted in a manner that the processes and outcomes are generally deemed credible and acceptable.

To ensure this is achieved, he indicated that in addition to CODEO stationary observers, CODEO will deploy its Regional Coordinators, Constituency Supervisors (CS), its General Assembly and Board Members as Roaming/Mobile Observers (ROs) in all the 16 regions.

Similarly, CODEO will deploy its observers to all the 275 Constituency Collation Centres and the National Results Collation Centre (NRCC) in Accra to observe and report on results collation, tabulation and declaration.

“CODEO’s deployment and observation plan makes it possible for CODEO’s presence across the entire country,” he said “Applying statistical principles of stratified random sampling procedure to select polling stations where CODEO’s RROs will be stationed makes it possible for CODEO’s visibility to be felt in every region and constituency, including the remotest and difficult to-reach-parts of Ghana, generally referred to as ‘overseas.”

By Akutu Dede Adimer