Constitutional Theorist and Associate Professor at Ashesi University, Maame Mensa-Bonsu, has charged the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) and other relevant state institutions to investigate cases of vote buying in the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Last week, some delegates of the party confessed to receiving at least GH₵300 from the presidential candidates.

Many have since criticised the act and the latest is Mensa-Bonsu.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile, the Associate Professor at Ashesi University, said state bodies like the OSP must be interested in that space.

In her view, the monetisation of politics should be considered organised crime.

“A political party by definition is a public institution. There is a reason we talk about how political parties are funded and how political parties operate because they serve a public function. So by virtue of them being a public entity, every institution that has supervisory control over public entities has jurisdiction of them.

“So if the OSP was minded, it should be no bar to him, that it is an internal matter of a public body. So I think, if nobody has jurisdiction, EOCO should. People are hurled before EOCO for much smaller sums. We have lots of bodies and it falls in the jurisdiction of one of them,” she said on Saturday.

On the same show, a Lecturer in Law at the Ghana Law School, Clara Beeri Kasser-Tee said money continues to dominate elections because the laws are not being enforced.

Madam Kasser-Tee who doubles as the Chairperson of the Constitutional Review Consultative Committee wants the source of the funds for elections in the country to be probed.

“We have created a political culture where to be worthy of political office has got to do with money and nobody wants to do anything about the source of the money.

“So until we start questioning where the money is coming from rather than praising people for getting money to do all kinds of things, we will have a problem. So the law is there but for it to be enforced it must be backed by a certain advocacy,” she said.

Researcher and Reform Advocate, Oliver Barker Vormawor also asked that there must be a fund disclosure system to check the source of funds.

“There is no declaration system for when people have contributed to campaigns, but there should be a system because those empower a candidate better and in different ways.

Former President of the Ghana Bar Association, Anthony Forson Jnr, on his part blamed the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) for not performing their duty.

For him, the lack of sensitisation is the reason vote-buying still persists.

“We’ve not been able to educate people to understand that political office is a trust office so when somebody is in political office, she’s actually your servant. But it is the reverse now, so when someone becomes an MP, we call the person Honourable and we start worshipping the ground they tread on.”