As she leads the ECOWAS Observer Mission in Ghana for National elections in that country, Liberia’s former president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has urged all Ghanaian citizens to uphold Ghana’s status as a beacon of democracy and turn out in record number and vote peacefully.
The former Liberian Leader made the comments on her Twitter feed on Monday, in homage to her role as a key transformer of democracy on a continent whose member states worked exceedingly overtime to broker peace in her own homeland during its own internecine strife.
Madam Sirleaf serves as ECOWAS observer boss for an elections in which Ghanaians headed to the polls on Monday in a highly contested vote between President Nana Akufo-Addo and John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress party (NDC)..
John Mahama, the younger of the two rivals, is running for the third time, while Nana Akufo Addo of the New Patriotic Party is running for the fourth time.
As in Liberia, the Ghana electoral body has come under intense criticism for overhauling the voters register on the cusp of the elections. The consolation with Ghana’s elections, though, is that their own Commission has promised to announce results within 24 hours.
Earlier on December 6, Madam Sirleaf, as head of December 7 Presidential Elections in Ghana, called for a broader ECOWAS-focused approach to issues of international dimensions.
Apart from her current role, former President Sirleaf in 2019 served as WHO Goodwill Ambassador for the health workforce. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, she stepped down from this post to serve as co-chair of the WHO’s Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. Also in 2020, she was appointed to the Development Advisory Council of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.