Political funding is relevant - Prof Bekoe

13/03/08
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
THE Chairman of the Council of State, Prof Daniel Adzei Bekoe, has described as uninformed claims from a cross-section of Ghanaians that it will be wrong for citizens to pay taxes to support the activities of political parties in the face of other challenging national needs.
He stated that the passage of the Political Parties Bill and the Public Funding of Political Parties Bill into law would create a more friendly, liberal and flexible environment for the country’s political parties to ‘flourish’.
In addition, he said, when the laws come into being, they would contribute to the growth and consolidation of Ghana’s multi-party democracy.
Prof Adzei Bekoe, who is also the Chairman of the Ghana Political Parties Programme (GPPP) of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), was speaking at the launch of the proposed draft Political Parties Bill, 2008 and the Public Funding of Political Parties Bill, 2008 in Accra yesterday.
The General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, Rev Dr Fred Deegbe, launched the bills and asked Ghanaians to read and discuss them intelligently.
The bills, drafted by the former Speaker of Parliament, Mr Peter Ala Adjetey and a legal luminary, Prof Kofi Kumado, have been accepted by the four political parties with representation in Parliament, namely the New Patriotic Party (NPP), National Democratic Congress (NDC), Convention People’s Party (CPP) and the People’s National Convention (PNC).
The proposed Public Funding of Political Parties Bill seeks to provide state and other public funding support for political parties, while the Political Parties Bill departs from the current Political Parties Act, 2000, Act 574, and wants the laws regulating the operations of political parties to be more liberal and friendly.
Prof. Adzei Bekoe said political parties “are not just electoral machines for achieving electoral victories but also act as leadership nurseries, public education institutions, avenues for national integration and skills acquisition during non-election years”.
He referred to Article 55 (3) of the Constitution, which requires that political parties are to “shape the political will of the people, disseminate information on political ideas, social and economic programmes of a national character and sponsor elections to any public office other than to District Assemblies or lower local government units”.
Prof. Adzei Bekoe said the State until recently was silent on the subject, and political parties remained one of the most stunted and rejected political institutions in the country.
“Thus, poorly established and poorly maintained, political parties may not produce the best quality leadership, both at party and government level,” he stressed.
He said it was in an attempt to reverse this trend that the GPPP, an off-shoot of a collaborative effort between the IEA and the Institute of Multiparty Democracy of the Netherlands, initiated moves to have the bills enacted.
Prof. Adzei Bekoe said with the new bills, the powers of the Electoral Commission (EC) in relation to the issuance of final certificates of registration were curtailed and were now vested in the High Court, adding that a dissatisfied party had the right for an appeal to the Court of Appeal.
He said there was a relaxation of some rigid and inflexible criteria, which form part of the qualification for registration as a political party, such as the need to have in each district at least one founder member of the party, who is resident in the district or is a registered voter in the district.
He said the EC’s supervisory powers were reduced in relation to the financial accountability of political parties, and that with the new bills, audited accounts should be submitted to the EC only for general election year and bye-election year, and not every year.
The Chairman of the NPP, Mr Peter Mac Manu, the Vice Chairman of the NDC, Mr E. T. Mensah, the Chairman of the PNC, Alhaji Ahmed Ramadan, the General Secretary of the CPP, Mr Kobina Greenstreet, and the Patron of the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), Dr Obed Asamoah, all supported the passage of the two bills into law.
They said the passage of the bills into law would ease the financial burden on political parties and consequently entrench the country’s multi-party democracy.
A Senior Fellow of the IEA, Brigadier General Francis A. Agyemfra (retd.), said in view of the ‘unique and important role’ political parties played in Ghana’s body politic and democratic practice, it was imperative that a congenial atmosphere was created for them to thrive and ensure that the laws regulating their operations were made liberal, flexible and friendly.