The All People’s Party (APC) finds nothing wrong with the Electoral Commission charging GHc50,000 as filing fees for presidential candidates, it’s General Secretary, Razak Opoku has noted.
The commission has been heavily criticized by some political parties for charging what these parties describe as exorbitant filing fees from presidential and parliamentary aspirants.
The NPP has said that the amount will limit participation in the democratic process to a privileged few.
The General Secretary of the APC, Razak Opoku, has, however, told Citi News that it is hypocritical for these parties to complain about the amount that is being charged by the EC.
According to him, the parties started the whole thing when they charged their aspirants high filing fees.
“With respect to political parties, they are being hypocritical. CPP cannot call itself a smaller political party, when they opened nominations for their presidential aspirants to contest, they charged GHc125,000… We have made our own internal elections expensive. We can’t blame the EC for making democracy expensive, we started that by charging high filing fees.”
Razak Opoku also said that independent candidates cannot complain either because the EC isn’t forcing them to contest.
“With respect to the independent presidential candidates, the electoral commission is not forcing anyone to be president. We want people who have achieved in their private lives, because you want to get the power to transform the lives of the people that you want to lead.”
“If you can’t pay Gh50000, what is the guarantee that given the opportunity, you can turn things around? The fifty thousand should have been GHc120000.”
Presidential aspirants to pay GH50,000
The Electoral Commission announced on Thursday [September 8, 2016] that the presidential candidates of the various political parties are to pay GH50,000 to enable them file their nominations to contest in the 2016 elections.
Nominations will be opened on Thursday, September 13, and will close on September 29.
The commission has been criticized by the New Patriotic Party, Convention People’s Party and the People’s National Convention for pegging filing fees for the December 7 polls at GHc50,000 and GHc10,000 for presidential and parliamentary aspirants.
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By: Jeffrey Owuraku Sarpong/citifmonline.com/Ghana