Managing Election- Relation Violence for Democratic Stability in Ghana Key words: Election Observation, Credible Elections, Legitimacy, Transparency, Conflict Prevention and Professionalism Introduction The growing demand for good governance and dissatisfaction with one-party systems and authoritarianism has contributed to the trend towards competitive elections across Africa. However, as Brahm(2004) posits, opting to go the electoral route has not been without risk. The hope that elections would indeed consolidate emerging democracies on the continent has, however, remained elusive. Recent elections in countries such as Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria have been replete with intimidation, violence and controversy over election results, further reinforcing the Afro-pessimism and perception of Africa as the graveyard of democracies(Ayee, 1998; Odukoya, 2007; Boafo-Arthur, 2008). In these volatile and precarious circumstances, Geisler(1993) notes that domestic and international observers have been likened to a'democracy police' who by their mere presence are expected to imbue the electoral process with legitimacy and transparency(Gyekye-Jandoh, 2009). Although the practice of election observation in Africa began in the early 1980s with the independence election of Zimbabwe, the work of election observers did not gain much traction until the 1990s. Consequently, it has acquired widespread acceptability as a means of providing a coherent as well as independent assessment of electoral processes (Cranenburgh, 2000). Evidently, Ghana is a vivid example of the 242