• Familiarize themselves with all relevant electoral laws, regulations, rules, and ECC procedures; and Commissioners shall, whenever possible, attend all ECC sessions. I have read, understand, and will abide by the above Code of Conduct: Signed in _____________________on_____________________2009 by Name of ECC Commissioner/Staff Member Signature of ECC Commissioner/Staff Member Source: <http://www.ecc.org.af/en/images/stories/pdf/ECC2009CodeOfConduct20090506English.pdf> 79. The Code of Conduct for the Ethical and Professional Administration of Elections prepared by International IDEA merits special mention. It represents a set of universal minimum rules for the ethical and professional administration of elections. It is an effort to systematize the principles that should guide the action of election officials. This Code of Conduct is available at <http://www.idea.int/publications/conduct_admin/index.cfm>. The main body of the code sets out the ethical principles that form the basis for electoral management, as well as detailed explanations and guidelines for applying these principles. It argues that in order to ensure both the integrity of the electoral process and the appearance of integrity, electoral administration should be based on fundamental ethical principles: (a) respect for the law; (b) independence and neutrality; (c) transparency; (d) meticulousness; and (e) service-orientation. 80. The Code of Conduct for Political Parties Campaigning in Democratic Elections, which was also prepared by International IDEA, pulls together a set of minimum rules for political parties and their supporters for participating in an election campaign. Ideally, these rules should be agreed or voluntarily accepted by the parties themselves and in due course could become law. There may therefore be codes of conduct which have been agreed directly by the political parties as a result of negotiations among themselves, often with the moderation of a third party (e.g. the agreement reached in September 1989 leading up to the elections after Namibia gained independence); they may form part of an agreement among parties that is intended to become law (as occurred with the code of conduct agreed by the parties prior to the 1996 elections in Sierra Leone, even though it did not become law); or on occasion the conduct of the political parties during campaigns may be regulated by an electoral law, approved by the sovereign authority, even though it may not be called a code of conduct (as is the case with the annex to the 1992 United Nations Election Law for Cambodia). 33 3. Prevention of electoral disputes (cont.)