The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) and the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) have called for an end to vote buying and selling while advocating for significant reforms in Ghana’s campaign financing system.
This appeal was made during a National Forum on the Monetisation of Elections, held under the theme: “Monitoring Campaign Spending, Abuse of Incumbency, and Vote Buying for Comprehensive Party and Campaign Financing Reform in Ghana.”
In an address to the media, the Executive Secretary of the Coalition, Beauty Emefa Narteh, highlighted the detrimental effects of monetisation on election outcomes.
“We want to bring attention to the issue of campaign financing and how our election has been so much monetised that it makes it difficult for those who do not have the resources to participate in the electoral process. We also see that there is a lot of money from serious organised crime funding our elections. We need to demand that these things are done in a way that nobody goes out there to buy votes.
“We realise that vote buying is a source of the increase in the cost of elections. Thus, we are not making our election competitive enough. How many women can get the kind of resources we are talking about to participate in elections? Day in and day out we see the number of female candidates decreasing because they may not be able to raise that kind of money to participate in the Electoral process.
“We realise that people who support candidates see it as an investment. They intend to recoup this investment when the people they gave the resources to come into power. That is why we have issues with procurement breaches. We need to come together as a country to say no to vote buying and selling,” Narteh said.
The Executive Director of GII, Mary Awelana Addah, urged the media and other key stakeholders to actively support efforts to address this issue.
“As part of a project that we are currently implementing, which we name “Monitoring Campaign Spending, Abuse of Incumbency, and Vote Buying for Comprehensive Party and Campaign Financing Reform in Ghana,” we have an activity under it which we named a National Forum and the National Forum is to discuss the issue around monetisation of our election.
“We believe that the issues around the abuse of incumbency and electoral corruption generally are very critical to talk about. We organised this programme to set the agenda for policy change. We need everyone on board for this fight. The media must shine a light on some of the wrongdoings that are going on, citizens must be informed that the law is against them taking money from these political actors.
“We need a proactive citizen who will reject vote buying and be able to stand out there and declare that we are taking back our power as spelt out by article 11 of the constitution,” she stated.
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By: Rachel Engmann
