Purge political system of corruption tag

Our Constitution guarantees the existence of political parties because Article 55 Clause (1) says, “The right to form political parties is hereby guaranteed,” while Clause (2) states, “Every citizen of Ghana of voting age has a right to join a political party.”

It is important to recall that the Constitution makes room for a political party “to participate in shaping the political will of the people, to disseminate information on political ideas, social and economic geographies of national character and sponsor candidates for elections to any public office other than the district assemblies or lower local government units”.

Political parties offer the people the opportunity to make choices, as other forms of democracy do not give the people the right to participate in the decision-making process.

Ghana has practised multi-party democracy over the last 21 years and the people are getting used to the ethos of democratic practice after six successful elections, although we are still in court over the 2012 polls.

The journey so far has not been without the pitfalls or landmines. For 20 years or so we have been able to build two dominant political parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), that have shared the governance experience of 13 and eight years respectively.

Our experience so far shows that the ruling political party has always had the upper hand when it comes to the mobilisation of supporters and resources.

The Daily Graphic thinks it is about time all Ghanaians took a second look at the political architecture, with the view to finding solutions to the bottlenecks in the system.

We are of the view that until something is done about the winner-takes-all policy, political parties will do everything to win power and remain in power so that they can enjoy the privileges of political office.

Transparency International has named political parties as one of the two institutions in the country that are very corrupt, an allegation that the four parties with representation in Parliament have rebutted.

The NDC, the NPP, the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and the People’s National Convention (PNC) say, “We fail to see how alleged perceived corruption of a handful of individuals can be misrepresented in such a way as to taint the administration of our respective organisations.”

However, the Leader of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, has expressed disappointment over the dismissal by the four parties of the report that described political parties as one of the perceived corrupt institutions in Ghana.

We think it is not in the interest of the body politic to maintain the corruption perception index by actions such as the payment of money to get elected as leaders of the parties, and parliamentary candidates and be confirmed as district chief executives.

We can no longer pretend that money bags are not determining the direction of multi-party democracy in the country. If this situation persists, the people will lose the opportunity to freely elect their leaders.

The Daily Graphic, therefore, calls for a second look at party financing and perhaps state sponsorship of political parties if that will remove big money from our body politic.

Daily Graphic/Ghana