Citizens efforts have deterred election manipulation in Africa, says group

Systematic citizen efforts have  successfully deterred election manipulation and exposed shortcoming in elections in Africa.

This is contained in a statement issued by 11 observer groups from nine African countries after a virtual dialogue on evolving role of the Parallel Vote Tabulations (PVT) in ensuring credible elections across the continent.

The virtual dialogue was  convened by CODE O/CDD-Ghana and Yiaga Africa with support from the National Democratic Institute.

The participants said  citizens engagements have also built confidence in electoral processes where warranted on the continent.

It added that PVT has also provided a platform for advocacy for necessary reforms to enhance electoral integrity.

The groups,  said the goal of the meeting was to analyse new threats to elections in Africa and formulate citizen observer responses building on the PVT to continue to promote electoral integrity.

PVT is a proven methodology employed by nonpartisan citizens’ observers to independently verify official election results, it is based on systematic assessments of voting and counting processes.

Participating in the virtual dialogue were leaders from: Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) of Malawi; Christian Churches Monitoring Group(CCMG) of Zambia  and Coalition of Domestic Election Observers/Center for Democratic Development (CODEO/CDD-Ghana) of Ghana.

Others are Elections Observation Group (ELOG) of Kenya; Election Resource Centre(ERC) of Zimbabwe; Indigo of Côte d’Ivoire; Mourakiboun of Tunisia and National Election Watch(NEW) of Sierra Leone,  Public Affairs Committee (PAC) of Malawi; Yiaga Africa of Nigeria and Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN).

Our correspondent reports that since the first PVT in Africa in the 1990s, citizen observers from the nine countries have conducted over 25 national PVTs.