A former Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, has advised Commonwealth member-nations to adopt a grading system for elections towards improving the quality of elections, promoting democracy and strengthening institutions.
Mr Jonathan advised the 53-member nation body to develop a ‘democracy marker’ which is a bench-marking system of election reporting to serve as a scoring formula for measuring compliance to identified democracy standards within the Commonwealth. “As in any human experience, we can always seek to further strengthen the efficiency and effectiveness of our involvement and enhance the impact it will have in ensuring the sustainability of democracy among Commonwealth member nations.
Mr Jonathan urged the Commonwealth to develop the ‘Democracy Marker’ with a grading framework or template for the assessment of a country’s performance after every election season.