Our politics, particularly in this 4th Republic, is corrupt and getting worse.
Last weekend, in response to the Ayawaso-East National Democratic Congress (NDC) primary, President John Mahama, the Majority caucus, and the party leadership all condemned the vote-buying and promised investigations.
Though the winner, Baba Jamal, has been cleared by the NDC’s three-member committee that probed the allegations, this episode shows some awareness that we have a problem.
The Office of Special Prosecutor’s (OSP) involvement is a cruel joke on all of us.
Just before the Ayawaso-East debacle, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) completed a presidential primary in which the top three candidates spent more than a combined 400 million Ghana Cedis! Virtually every delegate spent a weekend at a resort.
There are many who have put up mansions just from being delegates over the years. Party executives attending leadership meetings are given envelopes at the door and told what the president wants.
MPs are given inducements to do their jobs. MMDCEs and District Assembly members openly discuss paying for both presidential nominations and confirmation votes. And these are done by officials sworn to protect our republic and execute our laws.
And while at it, we sentence goat and cassava thieves to draconian sentences! And we fill our churches and mosques week in, week out.
These corrupt practices described here permeate every aspect of our public life, affecting education, contracts, and judicial decisions as the plutocrats look for money to buy votes and power. As a nation, we need to deal with. We have come to our Prah River, like the Ashantis under Osei Tutu Adikan.
A democracy that cannot police itself will be policed by others. There are developments that we must support.
The lawsuits by Dr. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng and Dr Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe is one initiative. They are seeking consequential, very non-controversial declarations about how our parties manage their primaries.
These processes are corrupt, undemocratic, and exclusionary. Our parties operate private clubs controlled by secret cabals. Courts are very important if they choose to be in such cases. In 2014, the Brazilian Judiciary unearthed the Petrobras scandal that unearthed 2.1 billion USD in bribes and 17 billion USD in lost revenue.
Our judges are citizens too. They care about Ghana—or they should. Let them be patriots and help fix Ghana and the judiciary’s repute.
The other approach is through constitutional reform that would entitle all party members to vote in parliamentary and presidential primaries and outlaw the exchange of money for votes.
This should be managed by the nation through voters’ registration, not under the control of the parties. Let’s save our democracy. Rule by the rich—plutocracy is not democracy. We must stop requiring good men to soil their hands before they can succeed in politics.
Long live Ghana.
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