All African Students Union To Monitor Liberian Elections

Accra, - The All African Students Union (AASU) today announced the formation of an observer group to monitor and ensure ''a free, fair and peaceful'' elections in Liberia. The group, the African Students Election Observer Group (ASEOG), consisting of 50 students of different nationalities will receive training in Ghana with an advance team of five leaving for Monrovia on the seventh of July. The rest will leave a week later. Mr Benson Obua-Ogwal, Secretary-general of AASU, announced this at a press conference attended by the executive members of the All Liberian Students Union and the National Union of Ghana Students. He said ASEOG will contribute to any effort aimed at rendering the results of the elections acceptable. ''It will impress upon the losers to accept the results in good faith and winners to open up to all genuine democratic forces and lead the way to reconciliation and rehabilitation''. He said on the election day, ASEOG will deploy three observers each in all the 13 counties of Liberia. Mr Obua-Ogwal underscored the need for the youth in Liberia to play an active role to ensure peaceful elections saying ''the fact that the youth have been used extensively in the civil war makes it imperative that they be active actors in the quest for the solutions to it''. The civil war, he said, has created enmity, mistrust and apathy among Liberians and urged students to be instrumental in mobilizing and educating their fellow youth for national reconstruction after the elections. Liberians go to the polls on July 19, after seven years of civil war which claimed 150,000 lives and displaced half of its pre-war population of two million.