Delegates of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) wishing to cash in on the forthcoming primary election for flagbearer aspirants will be disappointed as candidate Goosie Tanoh has said he prefers offering them education to inducing them with money, to vote for him.
Mr Tanoh said he will not “bribe” any delegate to vote for him.
Addressing delegates, party elders and serving party officials in the Upper West Region during a campaign tour, Mr Tanoh, a founding member of the NDC, publicly declared that he was not in the contest to buy votes, as has been the practice of some politicians in Ghana and other countries across the globe.
A determined Mr Tanoh told the delegates at Jirapa and Nandom that: “Our campaign weapon is not money but education”.
The internal elections of the NDC have been hit with allegations of vote-buying, with videos and pictures circulating on social media, of delegates receiving monies and items such as sewing machines, flat screen television sets, motorbikes, gas cookers from aspirants in return for their vote.
Mr Tanoh has been vocal against ‘moneycracy’ in Ghana’s body politic.
He is convinced that selling the party to the highest bidder would rob the NDC of competent candidates in the near future.
According to him, all 39,000 communities dotted across the country cannot develop without proper education, adding that he was determined to give education to voters rather than induce them with home appliances and physical cash.
He said vote-buying had negative repercussions on voters, the future of their dependents as well as the forward march of a middle-income country such as Ghana, and called on the delegates to reject bribes because it only gave presidential candidates the power to manipulate them.
Mr Tanoh charged the delegates to critically examine the campaign messages of various aspirants to inform their decision about whom to vote for ahead of the 2020 polls.
He said the party could only achieve that if a trusted candidate won the upcoming presidential primaries.
Mr Tanoh is one of 12 aspirants, including former President John Dramani Mahama, vying for the flag bearer slot.
In August 2018, Mr Tanoh formally announced his decision to contest the slot when he presented his letter of intent to the party’s General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia.