Deputy General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Haruna Mohammed, has insisted that allegations of vote-buying must be treated as a criminal offence and investigated by the Ghana Police Service, rather than being handled solely through internal party mechanisms.
Speaking in an interview on JoyNews’ The Pulse on Wednesday, Mr Mohammed argued that vote-buying undermines Ghana’s democratic processes and should attract the attention of law enforcement agencies.
“For us as NPP, we have said that this is a criminal matter. When it happens, we say Ghana Police should go on and do investigations,” he said.
He questioned why political parties would attempt to resolve such allegations internally instead of allowing state institutions to conduct independent investigations.
The NPP Deputy General Secretary also criticised the growing tendency of political parties to establish committees to probe vote-buying allegations, describing such processes as ineffective and lacking legal consequences.
He suggested that internal investigations often end up producing outcomes with little impact, while the alleged wrongdoing remains unpunished.
“Investigation should be done on criminal matters on this [alleged vote-buying] and they [NDC] have to do their own investigations which ought to come out as nothing, baseless, no effect, no any contribution just to tell us that proceed.. It is a useless adventure,” he said.
His comments come after the NDC announced that it would proceed with Baba Jamal as its candidate for the Ayawaso East by-election, citing constitutional and time constraints.
The decision was announced by NDC General Secretary Fifi Fiavi Kwetey following a meeting of the party’s Functional Executive Committee, which considered a report from a three-member investigative committee set up to probe the alleged vote-buying incident in the NDC primary.
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Source: www.myjoyonline.com