Ghana’s Majority Leader in Parliament and Member of Parliament (MP) for Suame Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu has called for a thorough re-examination of the expensive nature of campaigns and elections in Ghana.
According to the astute politician and one of the longest serving MPs in Ghana, politics has been overly monetized in Ghana due to obvious reasons including heavy expenses often incurred by persons seeking to be elected into political and governance positions.
Speaking on GHOne Television monitored by MyNewsGh.com, the majority leader said the monetization of politics in Ghana is real, a situation that has to be critically examined and conscious efforts made to correct it in order to avert the danger it poses to Ghana’s democracy.
Citing examples of how persons seeking to be elected Presidential candidates of their political parties spend to get elected and subsequently elected as President’s, he disclosed that the situation largely has the tendency to make politicians engage in covert and overt activities to recoup their money.
“When you want to go to polling station executives who constitute the delegates, you traditionally or customarily go to them and say the time is up and I have come to present myself to you. You go with drinks or cola. Increasingly people are beginning to say that convert the drinks or cola into money and the money keeps increasing. I’ve insisted that there are no Fathers Christmas in politics” he said.
He further bemoaned the increasing demands on MP’s by constituents which in his view have impoverished the legislators.
Source:MyNewsGh.com/Stephen Zoure/2019
