Monitoring and Observing elections

Following recent publications indicating that the Chairman of Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) has been invited to monitor elections in South Africa, the issue of monitoring and observing elections is brought to the fore. If one were to go by the dictionary definition of "observe" and "monitor", election monitoring and election observation would be used interchangeably. But they represent different concepts, even if there is a lot that is common to both.

By Tazoacha Asonganyi,
Usually, the election observer has no role in election administration while the monitor has. The election observer only observes and does not play a supervisory or executive role; the election monitor does not only observe, take note and report but also supervises and gives binding, corrective instructions to the election officials in the course of the electoral process.
In principle, the monitor is a representative of a political party or candidate. Since political parties field candidates at elections, their monitors participate in the maintenance of transparency of the electoral process, to ensure that no other party receives more favourable treatment; indeed, they look out for the interests of their party/candidate.
Not so for the election observer whose role is usually said to be the purposeful gathering of information regarding an electoral process and the making of informed judgement about the process on the basis of the information collected. In other words, the purpose of observation is to establish whether an election is carried out in accordance with the laws, rules, regulations and processes that govern the conduct of elections in the country concerned, and check the behaviour of officials and stakeholders in relation to the election.

There are usually local and international observers. In the African context, the most important local observers known include the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) in Ghana and the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) in Nigeria. Indeed, during the recent Ghanaian elections, CODEO deployed 4000 independent observers to polling stations throughout Ghana; among them were 1000 Rapid Response Observers (RRO) deployed in "statistically representative and randomly sampled polling stations" throughout the country.
Each RRO was required to send five text messages on Election Day to the CODEO Observation Centre at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Centre, Accra. Using the information received from RROs and other CODEO observers, CODEO carried out a Parallel Voting Tabulation (PVT) to publish exit polls. Their exit poll coincided to the nearest decimal point with the final results published by the Electoral Commission of Ghana for the first round of the Presidential election! CODEO also played an important role during the presidential election rerun.
This is why it is appropriate to recommend that the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church, the Cameroon Union of Journalists and other local NGOs that send out local election observers during elections in Cameroon would do well to form a coalition similar to CODEO, so they can play a more significant role during such elections.

International Organisations like the African Union, the European Union, the Commonwealth, The Carter Centre, the National Democratic Institute, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, the Francophonie and others usually send out international observers to observe elections in various countries. Such observers stay for weeks/months before the actual Election Day to assess candidate registration, the legal framework, the media situation, the work of the election administration, and the campaign environment, or for about a week to Election Day to observe the opening of polling stations, the voting process, and the counting and tabulation of results. Some international observers usually remain in the country after Election Day for a few weeks to observe how possible election-related shortcomings and complaints are dealt with by the election administration and the judiciary.

Both local and international observers usually adhere to a code of conduct that prescribes strict impartiality, no conflict of interest, professionalism, discretion, no hindrance of the process, no giving of instructions, no contradiction of decision of election officials, fact-based conclusions, no individual declarations on process, and much more. Each Organisation that deploys observers during elections gives its specific instructions to its observers.
From the foregoing, it is clear that the Chairman of ELECAM is technically an observer, not a monitor; he is a short term international observer in the Commonwealth Observer Group for the South African elections.
What the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa will be showcasing on Wednesday 22 April, 2009 is actually the apex of a process that has been prepared for about five years. We do hope that the much the ELECAM Chairman will observe will inspire, not overwhelm him. In any case, the man who urgently needs such exposure is not the Chairman of ELECAM, but the Director General who is responsible for the organisation and management of the poll in Cameroon.