The former Tamale Central MP, Inusah Fuseini, is not enthused about the use of culture as a guise to perpetrate monetisation of elections.

This phenomenon, according to him, is emboldening more individuals to buy their way into political offices without recourse to merit.

It comes on the back of electoral irregularities recorded including one captured live on camera during the just-ended Ejisu by-election.

The MP involved, Prof Kingsley Nyarko, admitted that the envelope contained cash which he was giving to Electoral Commission’s polling station officials for food.

But speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express on Monday, Mr Fuseini explained that such justifications among others are flawed.

“We saw a Member of Parliament exhibit a conduct which appears to infringe the provisions of Act 1034 which is the amendment to the criminal and other offences Act 39 now you hear people say that well he gave them money for lunch, it’s our culture. So you see the people tried to justify corruptible behavior based on our culture.

“But it is not even our culture, our culture doesn't suggest that be a busybody at an event. It is not your job to provide lunch for people who are there to participate in the [by-election]… and in this case, both the Member of Parliament and the EC personnel are public servants.

"So why will one public servant assume the responsibility to feed another public servant when he is not engaging in any charitable work,” he told host Evans Mensah.

Mr Fuseini also bemoaned the practice of aspiring candidates giving money to delegates or electorates under the pretence of “transport fare”.

According to him, the practice has perilous consequences which could impact the bedrock principles of democracy.

“Now, you must understand that it is not only one person or candidate in the parliamentary election, where it is one candidate, the corruption in the inducement of delegates is very minimal because there is no competition.

"But when there are many candidates, you will see the delegates taking [money] from all the candidates, and there's the race to the bottom.

“Who would be more corrupt in influencing and inducing the delegates to be able to cast their votes for him? And that is very problematic for our democracy. It means that determines and not the qualification, merit, or competence of a person.”

On the same show, a Senior Research Fellow of the Institute for Democratic Governance, Prof Kwesi Jonah, called on all stakeholders to take immediate action to eradicate this existential threat to the country’s democracy.

He believed that failure to address the pervasive corrupt practice would gradually undermine the very foundations of Ghana’s democracy.

“The Civil Society Organisations together with the political parties, we [CSOs] cannot do this without the support of the political parties. We must all accept that the buying and selling of votes undermines the democracy of Ghana, therefore, we must incorporate it into the code of conduct for candidates.

"So we must all work to show the candidate that in a competitive election, we have given the voters the opportunities to select the very best candidate for the position.

“It is wrong to buy a vote, you turn an election into an auction and it is not right. So CSOs and political parties need to work together to ensure that this problem, even if it is not totally eliminated, is minimised.”