A former Constituency Youth Organizer of the governing New Patriotic Party, NPP, Kwadwo Yeboah, has urged the opposition National Democratic Congress leadership not to allow its presidential primary to become another trading platform for the highest bidder.
Kwadwo Yeboah, in a panel discussion on Ahotor FM in Lashibi on Wednesday, said Ghana is neither a commodity to be traded nor a property to be auctioned and sold to the highest bidder.
“Ghanaian Presidency has never been for sale and should not be for sale now,” he said.
According to him, “the NPP has demonstrated that it has learnt nothing, but as a party, the NDC cannot follow her inglorious example. The next President of Ghana must not be a ‘dealer’ leader. Our President must not be a gangster!”
He said: the NDC has a sacred, patriotic, and democratic duty to ensure power is not left in the hands of the god of mammon.”
Kwadwo firmly believes the high cost of the filing fees and the guidelines for picking nomination forms is a plot to repeat what the former General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketiah did to George Boateng when he attempted to contest John Mahama in 2012.
Similarly, the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD)-Ghana has criticized the opposition National Democratic Congress for the huge filing fee set for their presidential primaries.
For CDD, there’s no better justification for the NDC to peg a filling fee at a whooping Five Hundred Thousand Cedis (Ghc500,000).
Paul Aborampah-Mensah thinks it is unreasonable.
“When they set it at Ghc300,000 we complained so you don’t expect me to congratulate them after it’s been increased. Shot up to over almost 50%. It is the same economic challenges in which these people are being requested to cough Ghc500,000. So, if the nation and country as a whole are struggling to deal with these economic challenges, how can an individual who is going to contest?
“Even if he is going to cough the money from his investments, these investments are also suffering. So, why do we put the burden on the individual if the country cannot cope with it? So, to me no matter how we do it, it’s been the usual excuse. Go and pull out some of the press statements from the start of democracy in the fourth republic and see the argument they make when they are announcing the filing fee and the competition fee for their contestants. It’s the same argument so nothing has changed,” Mr Aborampah-Mensah added.
The Programs Manager warned that current practice is inimical to the fight against graft as he reiterated calls for a dialogue on political party financing.
“There are three things; one, either it is a strategy to do away or cut down the number of competitions. Two, it is either they also want to manipulate the system in favour of some people. Thus the higher you set the cost, the higher you challenge people to mobilize resources. The party doesn’t care where people mobilize it because we are in a system where we are not accountable. Even the political parties themselves are not able to pass appropriate accounts required by elections won in the country. How can we follow individuals wherever they get Ghc500,000? We are talking about Ghc500,000 here, it is a systemic challenge that we need to deal with”.
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