The Director of Advocacy and Policy at the Centre for Democracy and Development-Ghana, (CDD-Ghana), Dr Kojo Asante, has intimated the need to address the fundamental issue of political party financing in order to curb corruption.
“Recent studies have made it clear the cost of campaigning and the cost of politics has been rising election by election and anyone who has been looking at the internal party elections for polling will show monetisation in politics is getting way out of hand,” he warned.
Dr Asante observed that if people who are alleged to be corrupt go through processes of being elected by delegates of the party and elected it would be difficult to restrain themselves from dipping their hands into state coffers because they contributed to the existence of their party.
He made the assertion on the back of the 2022 State of the Nation Address delivered on March 30, 2022, by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, among other issues, highlighted number of measures adopted by the government in tackling the canker.
He indicated that the government had invested more resources in the state’s anti-corruption agencies than any other administration in the country’s history and would ensure those investments did not come to nothing.
Dr Asante said “if you are going to appoint and elect people who already have soiled their hands during processes of going through nomination for their parties, then it is difficult when they come into office, they will be willing and able to restrain themselves from putting their hands into state coffers.
“In spite of measures highlighted by the president during the 2022 State of the Nation Address as being used to deal with corruption, little has been achieved because the Corruption Perception Index, Afrobarometer studies and Auditor General’s annual report, there is no evidence the country is making progress on issues of incidence of corruption,” Dr Asante lamented.
He implored the government to relook at efforts it was making in terms of the inputs against outcomes and interrogate why the country was not making required impact, however, conceded that digitisation had potential of tackling corruption, but needed to be able to show how it had actually reduced corruption.
According to him, the country had not made any progress in the fight against corruption due to a 10-year look at the country’s Corruption Perception Index which showed the best-case scenario was, the country had stagnated and worst case scenario was, the country had deteriorated. –myjoyonline.com
