The General Secretary of the governing New Patriotic Party, John Boadu has expressed worry over the alleged monetization of its internal elections.
This comes respond came when the host asked an allegation made by the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Buffer Company, Alhaji Abdul-Wahab Hanan Aludiba that a regional chairman aspirant somewhere in the just-ended regional executive elections doled out a whopping amount of Ghc30,000 to lure delegates to his site. Which was unfortunate.
But the NPP General Secretary who likens monetization of party politics as paying bribes is worried that the situation if not immediately addressed could affect the party systems in the country.
“Monetization of politics has been a major issue, not only our internal but the national elections as well to the extent that I remember when we were fashioning out rules and regulations towards the presidential primaries in 2007, we put in there that we were not going to entertain the use of money as a way of wooing delegates to vote for one candidate or the other. But it is like paying bribes. Most often it is not paid in the open.”
John Boadu who is seeking re-election as General Secretary of the governing New Patriotic Party again disclosed that, the party intends to investigate the issue to lessen its impact.
He said Sometimes, it beats their imagination that such amounts of money are doled out because one wants to contest an election.
It is something that we the party will conduct an investigation into it immediately after the entire internal elections have been done and find ways of mitigating it, he stated.
While admitting that the preparation for elections involves a lot of finances either for printing posters, T-shirts, banners, etc the General Secretary warned that there cannot be an excuse for aspirants to offer colossal amounts of money to woe delegates for votes.
His reason was that the practices of monetization in elections often deny competent persons the opportunity to lead.
He made the disclosure when speaking on a local radio station in the upper East region called A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show to run up his campaign tour of the region.
The General Secretary disclosed that most of the inexperienced aspirants who normally bulldoze their way to becoming political party executives by influencing delegates often perform abysmally in their tenure of office.
