Political scientist, Dr Emmanuel Asaah Asante says it is silly to assume that politicians who pay electorates for their votes will be willing to attend to their needs when voted into office.
Speaking on the Joy Super Morning Show following the just-ended New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary primaries in constituencies with incumbent MPs, he bemoaned the blatant monetization of the primaries.
According to him, the far-reaching impact of political monetisation in Ghana is eroding the country’s democracy.
“Because [the] message that you’ll expect them to give you in terms of your needs, in terms of your interests, all will be shoved under the carpet and that whoever can pay more will carry the day.
“If we continue on this trajectory I’m afraid this democracy is going to suffer a lot of setbacks,” he said.
He noted that once electorates accept money for their votes, the erstwhile democratic process becomes rigged against them.
“You will have people that you have voted for but they will go to parliament, do what they want or they’ll have power, they’d do what they want and anytime you’d want to show them the exit they’d bring money and cool the people down.
“Is that the democracy that we’re fighting and trying to maintain since 1992? Obviously, the answer is no,” he said.
Dr Asaah Asante has urged for more advocacy to break the monetization of politics in Ghana to safeguard the democracy of this country.
“So we have to continue the advocacy, by telling people that anybody who comes to serve you, politicians are servants and I can’t understand how you allow a servant who wants to serve you to bribe you to serve you.
“If we understand it from this perspective, we can make a lot of sense out of that – anybody who brings anything to you in terms of resources, in terms of money whatever to influence you that person is not ready to serve the society. These are people we must chase them out of the political system,” he said.
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