The Executive Director of the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG), Dr. Emmanuel Akwetey has noted that despite the successes chalked in the 2012 Presidential and general elections, the exercise was challenging.

“When you have challenges, you don’t look at them when the end result is good; the past four days have been challenging; election day and all the queues and biometric verification devices breaking down, but we went through that and finally media frenzy over results and all that... the import is that we managed all those challenges and we demonstrated we have capacity to do that.”

“I think if you look at our capacity to respond to the emerging challenges and deal with them so they could get out of hand or escalate into some serious conflict and explosion, I think we have to appreciate that we have challenges but we managed them and the end results have been good.”

According Dr. Akwetey, though the Peace Council may not be a constitutional body, it was able to execute its role as a statutory body very well.

Speaking on the Citi Fm, Dr. Akwetey said the NPP had the right to raise objections to the outcome of the elections, contrary to some assertions by analysts.

“Don’t forget that they have members and both camps have mobilized their members. They all wanted to win the election and nobody wanted to be short-changed or cheated.”

“We shouldn't also take our eyes from getting their followers and members to also accept a certain situation itself... They also wanted to be convinced that they are not being cheated.”

In his opinion, the decision by the NPP to dialogue with the EC and the other parties was a sign of maturity.

”It was quite inspiring to see that our leaders at a certain point are able to talk to themselves, and they were even in a friendly chat.”

Mr. Akwetey applauded the NPP’s decision to also follow the laid down legal procedure for redress.