You have no moral right to criticize us over vote-buying

General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Fifi Fiavi Kwetey, has slammed the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for criticizing the party’s handling of vote-buying allegations during February 7 Ayawaso East parliamentary primary.

According to him, the NPP lacks the moral grounds to criticize any vote-buying allegation as they ignored similar allegations during their January 31 presidential primary.

During an appearance on TV3’s Hot Issues on Sunday, February 15, Fiifi Kwetey argued that vote-buying is a significant problem in Ghanaian politics but noted that nullifying the February 7 primary results as some members of the NPP suggested, would have harmed the NDC “in a huge way.”

“If you tell the Electoral Commission to nullify our election, how are they going to ensure that we get another candidate? They were not going to change their timetable because of us, so we end up in a situation where we have no candidate,” he explained.

He asserted that the NDC is keen on maintaining all of its seats in Parliament and will not lose a seat to a party “with no conscience” to address a similar situation it now accuses the NDC of.

“Clearly this is our seat, we are not going to just allow the NPP to take our seat for nowhere, especially a party (NPP) that just did their presidential primary and there was massive vote-buying, but they don’t even have the conscience to initiate a move like we have done to acknowledge that this is a problem and take steps toward resolving it,” he maintained.

Fiifi Kwetey further asserted that vote-buying goes beyond individual parties as it runs deep into Ghana’s political culture.

“It is not as simple as that. We are talking about something that is a very pervasive practice. There’s no member in Parliament today who will tell you that they did not have to engage in this same practice in their primaries. There’s no one,” he argued.

“I am a politician and I know, and they also know. Even political parties themselves, in the conduct of some of our elections, we are compelled to resort to some of this. Why? Because that is what society has accepted now, so it is a society-wide issue and must be approached from that bigger perspective,” he added.