On Monday September 14, 2020, the Electoral Commission (EC) announced that those who are desirous in contesting the December presidential election will have to pay GH¢100,000 as filing fee. The figure is a one hundred percent increment of the GH¢50,000 paid in 2016. There have been varied reactions ever since the announcement was made.
The National Chairman of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), Nana Ofori Owusu, is, for instance, quoted as saying that the GH¢100,000 filing fee was an attempt to prevent others from contesting the elections. “They have set up stumbling blocks for others who mean well to want to contribute to the political discourse. And the fairness and the equity of our nation demands that this thing that the Electoral Commission has put there must be removed, because it is not the best approved for filtering out people.
“The Constitution does not say you must have big money to want to run for president. The constitution only talks of 40 years and of a sound mind. So where are these impediments being put in the way to disallow people wanting to exercise their franchise,” he reportedly told Citi FM.
But the presidential candidate of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), Dr. Henry Herbert Lartey, sees the situation different. To him, those complaining about the high filing fee being charged by the EC should withdraw from the race if they cannot afford. He contended that some of the political parties, during their primaries, charged as high as GH¢400,000 and does not, therefore, understand why they are complaining about the EC figure.
The Deputy Chairman of the EC in charge of Corporate Services, Dr. Bossman Eric Asare, in defending the position of the EC, said: “We did not increase because we can, but frankly, every four years we adjust the prices as far as the nomination fees are concerned.
“So in 2012 presidential was almost GH¢10,000, 2016, it came to GH¢50,000 and in 2020 it is now GH¢100,000. And those of you who know the value of money in each particular year, it is important you look at the value of GH¢50,000 in 2016, and compare the same amount to now and you will know that the Commission has not increased it that much.”
Though it is undeniable fact, the GH¢100,000 filing fee is very high, The Chronicle agrees perfectly well with the EC, based on a number of reasons. In all the elections conducted under the Fourth Republican Constitution, the smaller parties put together have not been able to garner even 6% of the presidential votes. In 1992 and 1996, they were able to get under five percent. Since then, the number keeps whittling down, to the extent that in the 2016 elections, they could not even get two percent of the valid votes cast in the presidential elections.
Despite these obvious losses in fortunes, these smaller parties keep on contesting the elections. In our view, some of them have turned a serious business such as presidential election into either a joke or business enterprise. They seem to be using the election as a smokescreen to secure funding from their financiers to oil their businesses. Other than this, The Chronicle does not see why a party that secures 0.6% of the presidential votes will still be interested in contesting an election and be throwing away hard earned money.
The funniest aspect of it all is that the leaders of some of these so-called political parties cannot even put three or five English words together to form a sentence, yet the they want the state to give them the opportunity to appear on the ballot paper, and increase the cost of printing to the tax payer.
The Chronicle agrees that democracy is very expensive, but it does not mean that we should allow every prankster masquerading as a politician to appear on our ballot papers during presidential elections. In the United States of America, with a population of over three hundred million people, hardly will you hear that more than four people are contesting their presidential elections. The same story can be told about Great Britain.
If these two powerful states, which introduced democracy to us, do not haphazardly file to contest their presidential elections, why should we, a tiny country called Ghana, be toeing that line, if not for business purposes or cheap popularity? The fact that the 1992 Constitution does not place a limit on the number of people that must contest presidential elections, apart from the basic requirement of the person being 40 years and above, does not mean every Tom, Dick and Harry can get up to file his or her nomination.
To us, at The Chronicle, the only way we can stop some of these jokers from exposing us to international mockery is to set a high filing fee for our presidential elections. This, in our view, will not amount to selling democracy to the highest bidder, as we are being made to believe, but bring sanity into our elections.
The post Editorial: Yes, GH¢100,000 filing fee is high, but our Presidency is not meant for pranksters appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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