Managing Election- Relation Violence for Democratic Stability in Ghana subsequent elections. The key domestic observer groups included prominent civil society organisations(CSOs) such as the Ghana Legal Literacy and Resource Foundation, the Christian Council, and the Conference of Catholic Bishops(Ayee, 1998). The mandate of observers, both foreign and domestic, was to observe the organization and conduct of the elections in accordance with the laws of Ghana pertaining to elections and to assess whether the elections had been free or fair. At the end of the process, the COG judged the entire elections to be'free and fair' despite allegations by opposition parties of irregularities which culminated in the New Patriotic Party(NPP) publishing its Stolen Verdict report in 1993(New Patriotic Party, 1993). The Carter Center, on its part, was more critical of some aspects of the organization of the elections than the COG but concluded that despite the prevalence of serious irregularities, it did not mar the credibility or validity of the results(Carter Center, 1992). The opposition parties criticized the COG and the Carter Center for failing to spot many instances of electoral malpractice. Generally, these allegations were not surprising because the COG in particular came into the country a week to the elections and only observed 487 polling stations which only represented 3 percent of the total 18,000 polling stations in the country(Jeffries and Thomas, 1993; Oquaye, 1995). In the view of Boafo-Arthur (2008) for instance,'The hasty declaration of the presidential results as free and fair by the COG was an apology of what actually transpired'. Subsequently, the biggest opposition party, the NPP, boycotted the 1993 parliamentary elections due to mistrust and the fear of massive electoral irregularities by the National Democratic Congress(NDC) government. 247