News:
July 7, 2020
The Chief Director of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, Dr. Evans Aggrey-Darkoh has said the wave of moneytisation that has clouded the process of getting lawmakers into the Ghanaian Legislature is making it difficult for them to choose lawmaking as a career.
According to him, unlike what pertains in the advanced democracies like the United States of America where one becomes a senator for over a decade and seen as a career, in the Ghanaian system, one or two term lawmaker is contested by a new comer with enough resources and becomes victorious.
His comment comes in the wake of high attrition rate in the Ghanaian Legislature as parliamentary primaries conducted by both the Minority and Majority parties witnessed long and new serving MPs losing and would not be part of the eight legislature next year.
As far as the country is concerned Parliament should have the best of brains as political theories have argued; “laws are the ways the societies are managed and when well crafted inure to the benefit of all”, he stated.
In an interview with Dr. Aggrey-Darkoh, he pointed out that when lawmakers enter Parliament and they are hit with the reality that the House is a resource constrained environment, then they come to the relisation that their expectations would not be met.
“When people become frustrated and expectations are not met they do not perform, and it affects their legislative duties and Parliament as an institution suffer from it”, he lamented.
He further pointed out that, at the Ministry’s engagement with political parties and other stakeholders it came out clearly that vote buying has a certain cascading effects.
When a group of people support your campaign, they are interested to know what they would gain in return as they are not “father Christmas”. They want policies shaped in their favor and added that if care is not taken, these financial fathers would dictate the pace.
In addition, the lawmaker would not be in control, rather the individuals who supported the lawmaker would be in control.
“We would have what we call state capture, the financial fathers are in control and corruption would fester, as we say, he who pays the piper calls the tune and this has a dire consequence for the nation”.
On the issue of moneytisation that has engulfed the Ghanaian politics and generated debate, he noted that as a country, anytime the country suffered a setback there has been a resilience comeback to deal with it.
“Since we continue to put moneytisation of our politics on our public agenda, I am sure that we would find innovative ways to address it head on”, he said.
Dr. Aggrey-Darkoh again, emphasized that if money becomes the sole consideration for one to become an MP, it is a problem and a worrying development and dilutes the politics of the state.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com