Prime News Ghana

Security expert advises political parties to make use of in-house security to supervise elections

By Primenewsghana
Shares
facebook sharing button Share
twitter sharing button Tweet
email sharing button Email
sharethis sharing button Share

A security expert, Richard Kumah-Don, has advised that political parties should use internal security effectively for elections to determine their faith in the election management body that will safeguard peaceful elections at the end of the day.

He emphasized that political parties should build up their internal election supervising security that would be trained to perform electoral monitoring responsibilities throughout the election processes.

"Achieving successful election requires corporative security trust," and parties should not make it the sole responsibility of the State security agencies but to have an effective security monitoring team to render a true account during elections on thier behalf to accommodate national peace by accepting the election outcomes.

According to Kumah-Don, political parties must recruit and train their own security team by equipping them with the knowledge of electoral laws, conflict management, and protocols to avoid disputes or threats during elections. He mentioned that political parties on election day need to deploy trusted party security to observe activities at polling stations, and doing that would ensure the transparency of voting processes and help to detect irregularities.

Party security is not deployed to intimidate, fight, deter, or override anyone's duty but to promote and straighten a conducive environment for voters to cast their votes for sound-mind election.
"The use of internal security can help to de-escalate tensions among party supporters" adding that party faithfuls can best understand the language of the party men.

It is best for party security to supervise to maintain a structured mechanism for documenting and reporting irregularities to thier appropriate authorities or the election management bodies whiles working with security agencies to complement official efforts in maintaining order without overstepping boundaries.

He finally advised that deployed party security should exhibit professionalism, neutrality, and respect for legal frameworks at the polling stations. According to him, "internal security can strengthen election monitoring efforts and uphold democratic principles."