Monrovia, 14 December 2022—On Wednesday, the Chairperson of the National Elections Commission (NEC), Madam Davidetta Browne Lansanah, at the head of a 2-person delegation, is currently in Grand Bassam, the Ivory Coast, to participate in the 8th General Assembly of the ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions, ECONEC.
The NEC-Liberia two-person delegation also participated in a one-day symposium of ECONEC. The symposium was held under the theme “Restoring the Sanctity and Integrity of the Vote.” At the 8th General Assembly, NEC-Liberia Chairperson, Madam Davidetta Browne Lansanah, maintained her position as the First Vice President of ECONEC. Others are Mr. Ibrahim Coulibaly-Kuibier, President of the Independent Electoral Commission of Cote d’Ivoire; Mr. Mohamed Kenewui Konneh, 2nd Vice President, Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone; Mr. Sacca Lafia, Treasurer, Autonomous National Electoral Commission of Benin; Ms. Felisberta Moura Vaz, Deputy Treasurer, National Electoral Commission of Guinea-Bissau; and Mr. Francis Gabriel Oke, Permanent Secretary Hear, Division of ECOWAS.
The NEC-Liberia delegation includes the Chairperson, Madam Davidetta Browne Lansanah, and the Director of Field Coordination, Madam Deddeh Mulbah Pusah.
The NEC-Liberia delegation is in Ivory Coast at the invitation of the ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions, ECONEC.
According to a dispatch from Grand Bassam, the main objective of the symposium is to critically interrogate the means of ensuring that individual votes add up to a legitimate and acceptable electoral outcome.
A NEC statement said the symposium also seeks to review different theoretical approaches to arriving at an electoral outcome and explore global best practices in election results management.
The symposium also looks at the practical means of creating an audit trail for election results and considers varying means of guaranteeing the sanctity and integrity of the vote in the West African Region, as well as sharing election results processing and management experiences from various ECONEC member EMBs. The one-day symposium will be conducted through plenary discussions on specific themes. It will be organized around four plenary sessions.
The dispatch said the expected outcomes are that at the end of the symposium, participants would have gained a clearer understanding of ways of ensuring the integrity of the vote and improving results management processes in order to further entrench citizens’ trust and acceptance of electoral outcomes. Participants are also expected to have acquired comparative practical insights on the function of a credible results management system.
