We must not promote candidates who flaunt money as mark of leadership – Kasser-Tee

A lecturer at the University of Ghana School of Law, Clara Beeri Kasser-Tee, is urging the stakeholders to refrain from promoting candidates who flaunt cash to occupy leadership positions.

According to her, glorifying such individuals only entrenches the phenomenon of vote-buying, which ends up putting incompetent people in positions of influence.

“The issue of political party financing, yes, there’s an Electoral Commission but there’s also the people’s responsibility including the media, as I said, to stop praising people who give access to money as the ideal or the mark of leadership,” she said.

Mrs Kasser-Tee was contributing to a discussion on Newsfile on Saturday, November 11.

Her comments were in reaction to the just-ended NPP Presidential Primaries, which recorded high levels of well-documented financial inducement among delegates who turned up to vote.

The Vice Chairman of the CDD-Ghana board indicated that though the legal framework exists, this is one key way to reduce the canker.

“Yes, we need the enforcement, but we also need advocacy to realize that we should not encourage people to believe that being worthy of political office means that you must have to share. So that people don’t start demanding goodies and then when you give them the goodies, then they say that everybody else is complaining, except those who got the goodies,” added.

The topic for the discussion was how to eradicate the brazen monetisation of elections and the role of law enforcement.