The European Union (EU) Ambassador in Ghana, William Hanna, has said the EU will be looking up to Ghana to build on its democratic track record in the December polls.

In an interview with Class News’ Ridwan Karim Dini Osman, he charged stakeholders to encourage healthy debate in the build-up to the elections.

“Last year, we saw a lot of elections that went well in West Africa. We expect the elections to also go well in Ghana. Ghana has an already good record…” he stated.

Mr Hanna disagreed with the Electoral Commission’s assertion that the current political environment is hostile, a situation which the election management body described on Wednesday September 7 at a colloquium on peaceful elections as a recipe for violence in this year’s presidential and parliamentary polls.

Mr Hanna said the political atmosphere “is good”.

“I think it’s important that the atmosphere should remain one where there is debate about the issues and it’s very important to keep a calm atmosphere as the country moves forward towards elections,” stated Mr Hanna.

He noted that elections are an opportunity that comes up every few years for people to exercise their democratic rights and they should be able to do that based on good open debate on the issues.

Mr Hanna urged stakeholders to make sure that on the day of the election, the electorate would be able to exercise their democratic rights in peace.