The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) is advocating for major amendments to the country’s electoral laws to clarify how political parties can raise funds for campaign activities.

The group is concerned about illicit sources of funding, including galamsey, fraud, and money laundering by political parties and individuals in their quest for political power.

According to the Executive Director of the group, Mary Addah, the lack of commitment by political actors to combat the galamsey menace is probably because these individuals were beneficiaries of the system.

“It is increasingly becoming apparent that we need to have a regime that regulates our campaigning that also regulates how we get money into our politics or to campaign.

"Both the Political Parties Act and the constitution did not envisage some of these because we believe that we are honest and very great people who believe in volunteering and so we didn’t envisage some of these things,” she said.

She explained that these gaps in the Political Parties Act and the constitution mean that there are no limits on financing.

To address this gap, she said the GII will be monitoring and tracking instances of vote-buying, campaign financing, and abuse of incumbency in the lead-up to the 2024 elections as part of a new project aimed at gathering data on these infractions.

“The Ghana initiative consortium has put together the project and it is intended to monitor campaigns, and spending, track their abuse of incumbency, and document instances of vote buying during the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections,” she added.