‘Political parties must disclose sources of funding’
The Leader and Founder of the Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG), Mr Percival Kofi Akpaloo, has stated that until political parties are able to declare their sources of campaign funding, the fight against corruption will remain impossible to win.
Mr Akpaloo posited that some political parties raised funding from dubious means for their campaign activities and therefore were not prepared to disclose how the funds were raised.
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But as a nation deeply concerned by the rising incidents of corruption, he said, it was high time to demand the standards in strictly adhering to the law that required political parties to render accounts and also declare their sources of funding.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic, Mr Akpaloo expressed concern about “the way we spend money in our body-politic is too much.”
Accounting and disclosure
There is also the need to look at why political parties are not accounting for their campaign financing and not disclosing the sources of their campaign financing.
“That is something that we must be concerned about as a nation if indeed want to win the fight against corruption,” he said.
Until the country summoned the will to embark on such a path, he said, “the fight against corruption will only be by word of mouth and no positive outcomes will be realised,” he said.
Making a case of the primaries of the two major political parties in the country, he said, it was amazing the quantum of money that was used by aspirants in a bid to win the votes of delegates saying that was something that ought to engage the attention of all.
He said, “If you look at the primaries of the major political parties, huge sums of money are spent bribing delegates here and there. That is an issue that we should all look at because how people get money to do all these things and win to become candidates is something that should engage our attention and investigation.”
Mr Akpaloo stated that “delegates are camped, fed and given money. If you induce people with money to vote for you, why would you be doing that?”
For him, the answer to that is “it means, without doubt that you are also coming in to make money. So at the end when the person gets political power or influence, they use it to their advantage.”
Favours from politicians
One other issue closely related to the rising incidents of corruption, according to Mr Akpaloo’s observation, is that when someone gets elected as Member of Parliament (MP) or appointed a Minister of State, “every morning, you will see people lining up on the compounds of the appointees asking for various forms of favours.”
He said there were instances that some appointees have had to distribute money that far exceeded their salaries thereby raising questions as to where they had the money from and why they were giving out such money stressing that “it is something that we should all condemn.”
He suggested that the two major political parties must put an end to holding primaries in their strongholds or places where they had sitting MPs so that the situation where a competitor would arise and thereby create a situation where they would fight to outdo each other and win the votes of the delegates through the use of money would be curtailed.
He was optimistic that “when that is done, the bribery and corruption in the attempt to garner votes will end.”
No politics of acrimony
As a party, he said, the LPG did not believe in the kind of politics that led to internal wrangling and acrimony.
“We believe that if we have a candidate, we do not need to do any contest once that candidate was selected by popular acclamation,” he pointed out.
“If we should get an MP, we will never hold primary for another person to contest that MP. We will urge the major political parties to stop such practice and allow their sitting MPs to go unopposed and that will also reduce corruption,” he said.
