An initiative of
the National Academy of Public Administration, 
and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
and the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, 
Princeton University.



Oral History Program 	Series: 		Elections
		
				Interview no.:	E6






Interviewee: 		Augustina Akumanyi
			
Interviewer:		Ashley McCants

Date of Interview:	August 13, 2008

Location:		Accra, Ghana			


Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice
Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties


McCANTS:	This is elections interview number four with Augustina Akumanyi at the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) in Accra, Ghana. It is 13 August 2008, and the interviewer is Ashley McCants. Thank you very much for agreeing to participate in this interview. I like to begin these conversations by learning a little more about a person's personal background.

AKUMANYI:	OK.

McCANTS:	Can you describe the position you hold here at the National Commission for Civic Education and what the goals are in your position?

AKUMANYI:	At the moment I am the Deputy Chairman responsible for programs. The Commission is made up of a management team. There is a Chairman who enjoys the same rights as a Court of Appeals judge. Then there are two deputies who also enjoy the same conditions of service as high court judges. There are four ordinary members of the Commission who are part timers who don't regularly work here. But the day to day administration of the Commission is managed by the Chairman and the two Deputy Chairmen plus the management team which is made up of the directors, the head office level at both the regional level and the district level. 

McCANTS:	What are your specific responsibilities?

AKUMANYI:	We, the Commission members-the team of seven-we develop the policies for the running of the Commission. We employ the staff and we do the day-to-day management of the whole Commission. We meet as a board once every month, according to the law. But ordinarily we take care of every day administrative matters like managing the finances that the government sends to us, doing education in the villages, the towns and everywhere.

McCANTS:	Can you tell me more about the positions you held before you came to here?

AKUMANYI:	Yes. I went to the University of Ghana and I finished a long time ago, in 1972. I read for a degree in English literature. Then after that I went to the Institute of Public Administration, we call it GIMPA (Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration) where I did a diploma in management. I joined the Ghana civil service as an administrative officer, class four which is the lowest class in the senior officer group. I rose through the ranks to second in command of the ministry, which was equivalent to a position of Assistant Deputy Director. At that time we used to call it Principal Assistant Secretary. So I worked for twelve years in that capacity.

	Then I left because my husband went to England. So I left and went to Britain where I joined the local government system there, and worked for twenty years in five London boroughs as Principal Committee Administrator. After those years in Britain I thought I'd had enough, and by that time Ghana had just moved into constitutional rule. In 2000 this government came into power and I went to the embassy to see the ambassador in London at that time. He had been my schoolmate at the University of Ghana. So when he saw me he said "Tina, what are your doing here? Our country needs you." So since then I started thinking "I better go home." But I had my husband and three children in England and I was torn between "shall I go"-and I had a very good job. I mean, as Principal Officer I was getting almost 3000 pounds a month and I was coming here to get 400 pounds. 

	So I was really torn between my country and my economic comfort. But at the end of the day the country won. So I came in August 2003 and I went to the castle to see the Chief of Staff, and then I was appointed to this job. 

	This job is not a political appointment, but you are appointed by the President in consultation with the Counsel of State. So you must be somebody who is experienced and can run an organization and must have a clean background and must be of upstanding character. So I came here and for the past four years, so far, so good. I have enjoyed it and I am happy to be here.  

McCANTS:	Can you describe how this Commission was established?

AKUMANYI:	Yes. This Commission was established by an act of Parliament in 1993. It was actually signed on 7 July 1993. This National Commission for Civic Education was set up as one of the last independent commissions, because the Constitution was drafted shortly after. They looked at the history of Ghana and realized that from the time of independence in 1957, every constitution was overthrown. The first republic under Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown. Then came Dr. Busia, but he was overthrown by the army. Dr. Hilla Limann was overthrown. Then the soldiers ruled for almost-I think a long time, anyway. Then it changed. Ghana moved to constitutional rule. And so when they were drafting this Constitution they wondered why is it that every time the Constitution comes it is overthrown and then we start all over again? Let us establish an independent Commission that would talk to the people, educate them about the contents of the 1992 Constitution to let them know their duties, their civic responsibilities as good citizens, and to protect the Constitution so that it doesn't get overthrown so rapidly again. 

	So the Commission was established. I wasn't here, but I think they did a good job in the beginning. The reason why I'm saying that is now, if you think of, say, Russia before the elections, if you ask anybody in the street who will win the election they will tell you it's Putin because Medvedev is Putin in their mind, so they are going to win. But this country was really educated at the grassroots to believe in the power of the thumb. The people were told that after twenty years, or ten, fifteen years of military rule, that every so many years you would go and vote and your vote would be counted and you would elect the government you wanted. So that was done in 1992 and the NDC (National Democratic Congress) won. 

	The NDC people talk about was actually the PNDC (Provisional National Defense Council), which metamorphosed into the National Democratic Congress. So they won in 1992, they won in 1996. In 2000 a different political party won. All this time we had been educating people. If you look at the voting pattern every year more people come out to vote. In fact, in 2004 it was 84% of registered voters. The way that they are struggling to register now, I have a strong feeling come 7 December we might get around 90% out to vote. 

McCANTS:	How would you describe the relationship of this Commission to the government? I am specifically interested in the way that the Commission has tried to build its independence. There can be many different ways to build this kind of independence. So what steps were taken to create an independent-? 

AKUMANYI:	If you look at the Act that established us, I think we are one of the luckiest commissions because it states categorically-and I'll give you a copy when I finish-It says members of this Commission should have independence, they should not be under any government's thumb. It is stated in the conditions of service. Because of that we make sure that we jealously guard our independence. So far, since I have been here, since 2004, I can see that no government has said a thing to us. We have been very independent. 

McCANTS:	Who has the power to make appointments or dismiss people on the Commission?

AKUMANYI:	It is also in the law. The members of the Commission shall be appointed by the President acting on the advice of the Council of State. Members of the Commission shall be persons who are qualified to be elected as members of parliament. Members of the Commission shall be persons who do not hold office in any political party. So as you see, we are appointed by the President acting on the advice of the Council of State and these things, not being a member of a party takes us away from the political arena. So we are actually independent of the government, as independent as we can be considering that we get our pay from the consolidated fund. 

McCANTS:	That was exactly my next question. Where does the budget authority rest and does the executive branch have the authority to alter or withhold allocations to the Commission? 

AKUMANYI:	We make our budget and present it to the Ministry of Finance. We are treated like any state institution. Our salaries are paid by the government, we are given money to do the work.

McCANTS:	And are funds available-? 

AKUMANYI:	And sometimes we get the development partners who help us with equipment. For instance, my computer was given to us by the UNDP (United Nations Development Program). We get logistics from UNDP and sometimes we collaborate a lot. We say to the DANIDA (Danish International Development Agency) or USAID "will you give us some money for doing civic education class for school children?" So we bought some copies of the Constitution. That is how we have been managing.

McCANTS:	Are funds available to you on a timely basis?

AKUMANYI:	Never. In fact, that is our challenge, considering that the constitution and the law say you should establish offices in every district. We have 147 districts now. With the amount of money given to us and the available staff, we have about eight persons in each district. The amount of money given to us to do the job when we divide it fairly among the districts-sometimes, in a month we get abut 50 pounds to do civic education, which is awfully inadequate.

McCANTS:	What is the source of the trouble in your opinion?

AKUMANYI:	The source of the trouble is there is not enough money in the government to begin with. The second is that I don't think civic education is valued as much as I think it should be valued given its importance. I think they think we are there and that's it. But I know that it is a very important institution.

McCANTS:	So how do you overcome the obstacle of low cash flow?

AKUMANYI:	We plead a lot with the government and we always make them know how important it is. Last week we were in the news a lot because we carried out an opinion poll. I think there was a question about who won the election. Everybody was jumping up and down. Even though it is sort of bad publicity for us, it has made people sit up and think about the Commission and what we are doing, because at first it was business as usual and nobody really wanted to know. 

	For example, there has been an important staff vacancy on the Commission in the five years that I've been here. That vacancy has been around since '98, and nobody has bothered to fill it. Now in fact all the commissioners are due to go into retirement and nobody has been appointed/ It looks like because we are independent, and because the government wants to leave us alone without interference, nothing gets done if it needs to be done officially. To me that is not right. I think there should be a body or a desk at the Castle, a seat of power, not to constantly monitor the independent institutions because, after all, it is the President on the advice of the Council of State that appointed us. The President on the advice of the Council of State can also remove us. So I don't see why nobody bothers to look. I mean they just appoint and say "they are independent institutions and you let them be." I think, in some aspects, since the money we are spending is the public fund, there should be more close monitoring than what is done at the moment.

McCANTS:	Can you describe the responsibilities of the Commission in terms of voter and civic education activities, and how you may share your responsibilities with civil society or media organizations? 

AKUMANYI:	In fact, if you look at our mandate [ interruption - end of file 1]

McCANTS:	This is continuing the interview with Augustina Akumanyi at the National Commission for Civic Education. We were just discussing the responsibilities for voter and civic education and how those responsibilities are shared.

AKUMANYI:	If you look at the functions that are allocated to us, it seems that we are the people who the Constitution mandated to do civic education in the country. So all the NGOs (Non Government Organizations) should really be working closely with us. In fact, we should set the standard for civic education, and we have been working on that because you do not want to open the floodgates so that people will come in and do any kind of civic education that may be alien to our culture or our tradition. There are some issues that may be alien to our culture. 

	For example, we have ways to approach our traditional chiefs. So these other civil societies may come and get funding, say, from the European community and just go to the chiefs without paying the normal homage that they are owed, and that can easily turn them off and not let the people listen. In spite of our political system, our traditional authorities still have a great deal of influence on the citizens. And I must say they wield more respect than the members of parliament in the area because if the traditional chief beats the gong and calls  on the community to come together, they will assemble without question. But if a member of parliament in the area makes an announcement or even pays for a gong to be beaten there will be division in the community that will assemble because they will say "oh, this party man is an MP." Then it becomes party allegiance. Whereas the Constitution forbids the chiefs, just like us, from indulging in politics. So if a chief calls on all the people from the various parties, they will assemble.

	So that is how we relate to the NGOs. Most of the nongovernmental organizations, the civil societies do not have offices or staff in the district so most of the time they come to us and then they use our staff to do their work for them because we don't get the funding. When they get funding they work with our staff and most of them acknowledge the usefulness and the help that they get from our staff in the district. 

McCANTS:	How do you go about crafting messages for the election? Sometimes you have messages that are instructional telling people to go here and bring this card. Some might be motivational to encourage people to come and vote and others might be admonitional, telling people not to impersonate another voter. Who is involved in the development of the messages for the election and what considerations do they take into account?

AKUMANYI:	We have literature and a materials development department. They make leaflets. Our leaflets are mostly around peace and nonviolence. Now, some of our posters, we are still developing them. We resort to graphics because of the illiterate population. They have to see pictures. So we have a poster that was very popular in which we said that we have a cat, a dog and a mouse sitting around a fire, relaxed. That is how we speak about tolerance and peace. In spite of all the differences between a cat, a dog, and a mouse, they are sitting by the fire together.

	Then we have cartoons which we saw on TV indicating that we can agree to disagree, no violence, we are all the same people. We have that. Then we also have drama in the market places, in town halls and in churches and mosques where we graphically do drama to tell the people how to go about and have a peaceful nation.

	Now, on the election issue, you see, it is divided into two types of education. The Electoral Commission is in charge of the voting. So if you put it into drama and ask this question, "who is organizing the elections?" "It is the Electoral Commission." "When are they going to do the election?" "How are they going to do the election" "Are they going to use a thumb print, a tick or a cross?" "What are the ballot papers going to be?" All these questions are technical questions which are going to be answered by the Electoral Commission.

	Now when it comes to civic education our responsibility is more psychological, to impress on the citizens that in democracy there should be participation, that all of us should participate. The duty of a good citizen is to go and register and when it is time to cast your vote to go and cast it peacefully, quietly and move away. So we answer the psychological question of why is it important for a person to go and vote at all, and why they should vote peacefully. 

McCANTS:	At one point during the electoral process do you release these messages?

AKUMANYI:	Our work takes place throughout the year. Unlike the Electoral Commission that has a specific time for its duties, we work throughout the year, but we do intensify voter education in terms of peace building in the election year. Since September of last year we have been talking to party youth activists telling them why they should not be used by politicians who want power and may incite them to violence. So that one we do throughout the year. We give them the leaflets we have. So it is throughout the year. Then we help. You see, for example, after this voter's registration there is going to be an exhibit of the voters' register. Most people do not think it is important at all. Even though the Electoral Commission will tell them we are releasing the books at this particular time and you should all go and check, they don't. So we have turned it into a big program, a good activity. In all the districts, in all the units, in all the villages we will go and tell them the importance of going to check that your name is on the register because that is where the trouble starts. If they don't go and check that their name is there and recorded correctly, on election day they go to vote and, as they can't find their name, a queue starts building behind them. They refuse to leave the place and within a short time there will be trouble there, as soon as too many people are gathered. They argue "I registered, why isn't my name there?" That is the beginning of trouble. If everybody listened to us, they would go and check their names and make sure that they are there. It takes about one minute for each person. They just go, tick name, take their ballot papers, and end of the story. So we value the exhibit: Go in to check you name on the exhibition register, it is very, very important.  

McCANTS:	How effective do you think this type of voter education is, and how would you measure that effectiveness?

AKUMANYI:	We are constantly monitoring and evaluating. We have a research department so for whatever we do, after we have done it, they go out to the field and do monitoring and evaluation. 

McCANTS:	Have you found that there are some messages or types of media that are more influential than others?

AKUMANYI:	I think that drama is more influential in the villages because it is graphic and it is a drama. They know drama, they see it visually and we use the cinema. We have two cinema vans. So whenever we have done a program we also show films after that and it is very popular, more popular than workshops. Workshops are targeted towards people with middle levels of education and lower, maybe basic school education: workshops are good for them. But the drama, the durbars (traditional meetings) with the chiefs and the citizens, that one is more popular. 

	When you come to the intellectuals at the university, they want symposia and workshops; that's good.  

McCANTS:	Are there any groups of people that are particularly hard to reach with information, and what steps are taken to reach out to those groups?

AKUMANYI:	There are people who are more difficult to educate. Those are the intellectuals in the capital, the educated ones. They think they know everything but unfortunately they don't know the nitty-gritty issues. So what we do is to target groups like the military. We go to their bases and do education with them. We go to the police and do education with them. The security agencies, I wish we had money to do more of those because any time we do it, it is quite popular among them and they are quite grateful for it. We tend to do it with parliament but they are always in session or they are going to the villages so it is very difficult to get to those target groups.

McCANTS:	In many countries voter and civic education is conducted entirely by the Electoral Commission itself. Ghana has a separate commission for civic education. What do you think are the advantages or disadvantages of that kind of structure?

AKUMANYI:	I think that there is a bit of a disadvantage because we have to synchronize our activities and we should be able to be on the same platform doing things. It happens in the districts, but in the capitals and in the head office it doesn't happen often. I mean, for example, this voter registration-We were not involved a lot but I think the groundwork we have done worked very well because we still got a lot of people trooping out to vote. That is our mandate: to educate people to know their civic responsibility and to act on it. From what we saw, people are aware of their civic rights and their responsibility to register, possibly for voting.

	But the Electoral Commission opened a few polling stations. There are over 5000 polling stations or 2000 something, but they didn't open all of them. Now if we were working together we would have made sure that we displayed enough information in the media at the particular polling stations, put a poster there indicating that this polling station has not been opened; your nearest polling station where you can go is opening at this time or that time. We couldn't do this, and it confused a lot of the people who were going to register. So these are some little issues. 

	Also, when we were requesting funds for voter education, the ministry thought 
"why should we give you money when we are also providing for voter education by the Electoral Commission?" There was that conflict there and we had to go back and explain to them that ours is the psychological bit of education, and also about talking to the people in the language that they understand because in every district we employ staff who speak the dialect. So our education is delivered in the language that the people understand. When we finish whatever education we are doing we always have an open forum for them to ask questions so that we can ascertain whether what we taught them has really gone down well.   

McCANTS:	Are there any kinds of mechanisms in place to help facilitate coordination of messages or coordination of activities with the Electoral Commission?

AKUMANYI:	It is only on the relationship basis. I am very close to my colleagues there and I'm close to some of the staff. Some of my staff are also close to their Electoral Commission counterparts. So on a casual basis they go and get materials that we need, but I think it should be more formalized and we should be meeting more than we do at the moment.

McCANTS:	If I asked you for advice about how to best convey information or messages-specifically I'm interested in an election in a country similar to Ghana, what advice would you give?

AKUMANYI:	I would advise you that it depends. First, you have to first assess the literacy rate of the country, the people you are going to talk to. If they are not very educated then use drama and pictorial methods and cinema to do your education. If they are literate like, say, the United Kingdom, do leaflets because that is what is done there. In election times nobody goes around educating anybody. The education comes in the form of leaflets. They have a good address system. I used to work with elections in Britain. I was a presiding officer at each election they had, so I am well versed in election duties and registration and that sort of thing. I know that for example the parties are very active in their recruitment drive. My three children, when we went there they were very young, under ten. But as soon as the first one turned 16 the parties got a name and address, and said "Miss Akumanyi, thank you, your birthday is today and you are 16. We are the Liberal Democratic party. We are inviting you to join us." Their letter came. Then the conservatives came. So right from the beginning this young person who had just finished a basic education was introduced to the parties to make her choice.

	But us here, we don't have an address system. We don't know anybody's birthday, so that won't work here. So it depends on the audience you are targeting.  

McCANTS:	How do you recruit your staff members at the district and local levels, and how much staff do you have? Do you feel that it is adequate? 

AKUMANYI:	We recruit by advertising in the local papers and the national print press, and then we do interviews for the senior officers. At the regional level we allow the regions to interview for typists and drivers. Now, at the moment the staff strength is approximately 1600, distributed about establishments. The staff establishment should be eleven members of staff in each district. We are short of staff at the moment because of the new council that came in; we have not had enough money to open offices so they are supervised from their closest district.  

McCANTS:	How are your staff members trained? 

AKUMANYI:	As soon as they come in we have an induction for them at the regional level, and then we tell them about the Commission. Occasionally we call them together in each region and have the members interact. We also have formal training for them whenever we are embarking on an activity, a major program. We call the district training forces and we train them on what we are going to do the training about, and they go back and train their staff and start to work.

McCANTS:	How adequate do you think this type of training is?

AKUMANYI:	I think it is good enough but we should be able to do more because sometimes when we haven't contacted them for a long time they feel that they are being neglected and wonder what is happening. If we could have this sort of thing at least four times a year, it would be good. 

McCANTS:	Do you have any ways of evaluating the performance of your staff?

AKUMANYI:	Yes, we do evaluation, performance monitoring, performance appraisal, whatever. We do it from the basic level up.

McCANTS:	How do you-do you protect staff members from threats or any kind of intimidation at the local level?

AKUMANYI:	They don't get that often. They don't get threatened because our work is advisory; we can't do very much. We just appeal to you to do things, but it is not bad. I think if there were valid threats we would check them. 

McCANTS:	What advice do you have about the timing or the sequencing of different election and voter and civic education? Do you have advice about how it should be timed or how it should be sequenced?

AKUMANYI:	Our work should happen all the time. Civic education is not a periodic affair, it is constant. So we keep it up through the school children. We want to catch them young so we have established civic education classes in the second cycle institutions, where we make sure that we teach them the contents of the Constitution. We have designed a game that we call the Constitution game: a copy is over there. They play it, it is like a Monopoly game where they land on the Constitution while they are still enjoying a game. So the children learn. We do it as they grow up until they become adults. We try to establish it in workplaces, but sometimes it is not sustainable due to-[interruption, end of file 2]  

McCANTS:	We are continuing the interview with Augustina Akumanyi at the National Commission for Civic Education. What other methods do you use to reach out to certain marginalized populations, maybe women or the disabled? 

AKUMANYI:	We have special programs for women. These programs were actually sponsored by UNDP. We did it just before the district assembly elections in the year 2006 because when the African Peer (Review) Mechanism (APRM) came and did their peer review in Ghana, their report stated categorically that women were woefully underrepresented in decision-making. So we should try to encourage more people to get into district assemblies and then train them for upward mobility eventually, to get to parliament and represent women. 

	So we did specific activities targeted to encouraging women, and we did it in collaboration with the Ministry for Women's Affairs, Women's and Children's Affairs. When we monitored later and got the figures, there was a slight increase in the attempts that women made to get to the district assemblies. So we are building up. It is a very, very gradual process but we are working on it.  

McCANTS:	You have mentioned that you partner often with international donors. Our program is aiming to help citizens and policy makers build relationships with international organizations and donors but sometimes those relationships affect the ability of people like you to do their jobs well, and sometimes foreign assistance creates a certain set of problems. So I want to ask you, are there two or three mistakes that you commonly observe that donors make with respect to relationships in the host country?         

AKUMANYI:	Yes, there are some things that I think-for example, when we get donor support they sometimes come with programs that we should do and should time in a specific way. Because we are on the ground we always know the best way to time certain activities. For example, we know that when it is farming season it is no use going into the villages to do education there because the people will go to the farms and you won't get the audience you want. But when it is a period when there is nothing going on, then they are bound to listen. But because most of the donors come with their funds and timing expectations, you are supposed to fit your education in that slot and sometimes it doesn't work the way we really want it to work. So I think if they involve us more in the planning of these activities and try not to be so specific on their timing, it would be more effective.

McCANTS:	In your line of work is there an aspect of donor policy or management that you think works better now than it used to?

AKUMANYI:	Sometimes you don't understand it works out very well and sometimes they ask you for-[Interruption, end of file 3]  

McCANTS:	Returning with the interview with Akumanyi at the National Commission for Civic Education. She was just outlining the aspects of donor policy that may work better now than they used to. 

AKUMANYI:	Yes, I think that now that there is this method of channeling the monies through the ministry, and sometimes we are deeply involved in governance. Because there are so many different governance situations. You may hear that the funds are really for civic education but they never get to us, they end up with other institutions and we don't come in at all. So again, I think sometimes it should be worked out in such a way that donors deal with us and it is agreed-we would probably sign a Memo of Understanding, and then the funds would go through to us. That would be a much better arrangement.     

McCANTS:	If you could offer others here or in other countries some advice about how to effectively work with international donors, what recommendations would you give?

AKUMANYI:	I would say that the donor countries are very helpful in the development of democracies. In fact, they have helped so much that I think Ghana's democracy would not have grown to where it is without them. As much as possible, we should try to work towards their terms because donor agencies also are answerable to the taxpayers in their various countries and it is the taxpayers' money that they are using to help. So strictly speaking, we should not be overreliable on donations. We should try to sustain whatever they have started with us as they leave. For example, the International Labor Organization (ILO) gave us $55,000 last year to do civic education on the worst forms of child labor because there are some horrible places. Last week, we were in the Volta region in a mining community. They mine for a certain clay, a white clay. Because the clay is underground children have to dig holes and then walk into little tunnels to dig this clay. Sometimes it caves in and kills them. So ILO did the research with us and they gave this money to do the education, and we did it.

	What I'm saying is that the ILO money will run out very soon. It is our duty to try, as much as possible, to sustain the campaign until child labor is eliminated completely.

McCANTS:	Are there any other countries whose experiences you have found particularly instructive in your work here? What would you say you found useful about those?

AKUMANYI:	Because my background is in local government in Britain, I find their system very, very good, like the decentralization of the local government system. It works wonderfully in Britain, and when I heard that there was decentralization in this country I was very happy because I thought it would be like London where there were different boroughs that set up their own things and they get subsistence aid from the central government on an equal basis. The districts can do a lot of things without resorting to the central government. I mean, I can't see anybody rising up to plan a coup d'Žtat in a developed country like London because even if you go and bomb the whole of parliament, the local government will work and it will not affect the districts. 

	Whereas here every single thing goes through the central government. The districts are not able to survive on their own and for everything they look up to government. And of course, government cannot do everything for the district. There is a need for self-help and then educatation of the citizens so that they are able to do things for themselves, because they are capable. The citizens have been doing something we call social auditing where we told them to get involved in the development of their districts and monitor to see if money is coming in and spent equitably and legally without people pilfering the money for themselves. The chiefs and the people were quite happy to know that it was their duty to look after government money sent to their district, because it also belonged to them.  

McCANTS:	What do you think will be the biggest challenges to arise in this election environment in Ghana and what do you think will be the biggest opportunities for this election? 

AKUMANYI:	The biggest challenges will be ensuring that the voting goes smoothly and you don't have any violence, because the fear now is that people are so aware of what happened in Kenya, what happened in Zimbabwe that they are all on tenterhooks. But I know that because of the education we have done and the way that Ghanaians are aware of their responsibilities and their love for peace, these elections will go smoothly. Their joy is that we would have clocked another social success in our democratic dispensation.    

McCANTS:	Thank you very much.

AKUMANYI:	You're welcome. 

Innovations for Successful Societies				Series: Elections		
Oral History Program						Interview number: E-6
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Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties