Non-existence of political party funding regulation root cause of corruption - Prof Aryee

A senior fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Professor Joseph Atsu Aryee, has expressed worry over the manner in which political parties in the country fund themselves for campaign and other routine activities.

Professor Joseph Atsu Aryee noted that the huge amounts spent on political parties’ activities is mind boggling wondering how parties are able to raise such amount.

Using the recently held primaries of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as a case study he admitted that, “I was surprised recently when during the NDC primaries some people said for primaries alone we spent GH¢300,000 then how about the main election”.

He further made assumptions that the quoted amount may be meagre as compared to main elections while questioning why stakeholders are doing nothing about it.

The Political Science lecturer at the University of Ghana believe that party executives are often not privy to where candidates acquire their funds.

“Where is the source of your funding?” he queried rhetorically.

To him, “someone must be accountable for that”.

According to him, Ghana currently lacked a robust regulatory framework for political parties which to him is the result of a deeply rooted corruption scandals the country is faced with.

“Party financing regulation is non-existent and we need to deal with that,” he stated.

Prof Aryee thus called for the setting up of a new body to regulate the financing of political parties to curb corruption stressing that there was the need to enforce the Political Parties Act, 2000 (Act 574) and other legislations.