According to him, the country’s electoral laws grant exclusive rights to the Commission to seek clarification on details of political parties such as their source of funding.

[contextly_sidebar id=”PU3aWwQts6yAbLKVqRrunhc2aVM0ydaJ”]The Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) had given the flagbearer of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom and Hassan Ayariga of the All People’s Congress (APC), up to Wednesday, October 26, to explain how they funded aspects of their political campaigns.

According to a report by the Daily Graphic, EOCO in its letter to Hassan Ayariga said it was interested in how he claimed to have expended over $6 million dollars to procure vehicles, among others.

It also asked Papa Kwesi Nduom to state the source of the over GHc1.7 million he used to pay for his filing fees at the Electoral Commission (EC) and that of his parliamentary candidates.

But reacting to a question on whether or not he honoured the invitation, Dr Nduom told Umaru Sanda Amadu on The Big Issue on Saturday [Otober 29] that, the Electoral Commission was the only institution that could ask political parties questions concerning the source of their campaign funds.

“When it comes to campaign funding and so on, it is based in the law; it is in the political parties’ that it is the Electoral Commission that has the mandate to come and ask me questions to come and ask me questions or to go and ask any political party [such] questions,” Dr Nduom said.

He added that “there are provisions in that law that requires that before elections from time to time we do provide our financial statements. After elections we do so, and so we [PPP] have been doing it. We are one of the few political parties that has been doing it religiously and so the month after this election, we will do so, so if anybody is interested, let them go and ready the political parties’ law,” he concluded.

‘EOCO has no right in questioning parties over source of funding’

Meannwhile, a former Chief Director of the Electoral Commission, Kwame Damoah Agyemang has said that the Economic and Organised Crimes Office’s (EOCO) interest to probe into the source of campaign funds of Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom and Hassan Ayariga is wrong since it has no such powers.

He said in an interview that, “EOCO has no power to insist on the parties submitting their accounts to them. The political parties prepare their audited accounts to the Electoral Commission that is the law.”

‘EC must check source of political party funding’

The Progressive People’s Party has been championing the crusade for the EC to comply with the provision in the political parties’ law that urges the commission to look into the source funding for the various political parties.

The policy advisor of the PPP, Kofi Asamoah Siaw, told Citi News in an earlier interview that the Commission will fail Ghanainas if it does not comply with the provision.

“The Electoral Commission has that responsibility to check the funding of the political parties. If you tell the EC to find out how the NDC is funding its campaign, they will tell you that they don’t know,” he said.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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