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The Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Nii Ade Coker has explained that expansion of the party’s electoral college system is to reduce the influence of money on the processes.

The NDC after a National Executive meeting last week expanded its electoral college to include every member of the party instead of the system where only delegates voted.

The directive implied that, every registered member of the NDC will exercise their franchise, in 6,000 poling centres nationwide, in the party’s presidential and parliamentary primaries slated on November 7, 2015.

Ade Coker said “we’ve been discussing this for a long time, it didn’t start only today. We were even going to do that at the last regional and constituency elections, unfortunately we were unable to finish with the process so we still had to deal with the delegates concept.”

Delegates system too expensive

He conceded that, “the delegates system as all of us know was prone to certain anomalies. I must confess; it was rather more expensive to contain because the demands of the delegates became so high. You get to a situation where somebody who has not taken part in party activities for a long time, with moneybag, comes, hijack the system and then he is elected.”

“The delegates system as a matter of fact does not encourage the party to grow. So this system is to cure moneycracy in our system,” added Ade Coker.

We have monetised politics, all of us!

The Speaker of Parliament, Edward Doe Adjaho had earlier expressed similar sentiments over the dominance of money in Ghana’s politics. He observed that Ghana’s democracy has got to a stage that money rules rather than seeking the interest of Ghanaians. “We have monetized politics, all of us. If you don’t pay they won’t vote for you,” the Speaker of Parliament stated.