By William Selmah wselmah@gmail.com
International election observers for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) say it is the Liberian people who will themselves ultimately determine the credibility of the 2017 elections.
It wants Liberian political parties and candidates to cooperate in good faith in order for results to be promptly released.
The admonition is contained in the organization’s post-election joint preliminary statement read on Thursday by the former President of Kosovo Atifete Jahjaga, U.S. Observation Mission Director Samantha Smoot, former Ghanaian Member of Parliament and Trade and Commerce Minister Dr. Hanna Tetteh.
The December 26 runoff presidential election is between Senator George Weah of the main opposition Coalition for Democratic (CDC) and Vice President Joseph Boakai of the ruling Unity Party (UP).
The NDI delegation’s findings concluded that the election was “peaceful and orderly”, concuring with those earlier released by other local and international monitors.
The NDI observers thanked the National Elections Commission (NEC) for its level of professionalism exhibited thus far.
In its preliminary recommendations, the NDI called on the Liberian government to “engage fully in the implementation of Executive Order No.91 regarding the establishment of a Joint Presidential Transition Team to ensure the orderly handover from one administration to the next”.
At the same time, it wants government to integrate review for legal framework for elections into Liberia’s constitutional review process, in order to harmonize the elections law, the constitution and legal precedents.
The NDI further called on government to “review electoral resolution dispute mechanisms to avoid potential conflicts of interest and ensure that timelines for each stage of the process are reasonable and clear.
To the NEC, it recommended the “release of provisional results in a timely fashion to enhance confidence in the transmission and tabulation process; provide polling place-level results in an easily analyzable (machine readable) format on the NEC website.”
“Ensure that complaints from NEC, should they arise, are adjudicated in a timely manner and in accordance with the legal framework,” the NDI said in its preliminary recommendations.
To the media it cautioned them against using inflammatory words and to report only those pieces of information that are verified.