Director of Advocacy and Policy Engagement, CDD-Ghana, Dr. Kojo Pumpuni Asante, says incumbency abuse and acts of vote buying in the upcoming Assin North by-election devalue Ghana’s democracy.

He was referring to allegations made by the National Democratic Congress accusing the ruling New Patriotic Party of abusing their incumbency and inducing electorates with money and other gifts to get them to vote for their candidate.

The government in the run-up to the by-election has also initiated some developmental pojects in the area and promised more if their candidate is voted into power.

According to Dr. Pumpuni, such acts undermine the essence of fair competition and democracy and must be checked.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, he said, “If you look at the definition of incumbency abuse and vote buying, in essence, there is nothing different from what happened in Kuamwu and what’s happening now, and what’s happened with many many by-elections.

“The incumbents always take advantage of this process to speed up projects that they might not even have money for, or they might not even have the allocation for. And there are consequences to it because first of all, it creates almost like a gimmick for the whole process of democracy.

“Increasingly, citizens begin to see these things as just tricks that politicians use to gain an advantage in an election and completely undermine the essence of fair competition and democracy. And already we are struggling with people’s confidence in democracy.”

He noted that citizens’ reaction to these political gimmicks evidence the deterioration of Ghana’s democracy and the devaluation of the civic exercise.

He urged that regulation should be put in place to check abuse of incumbency and vote buying in the country.

“When people talk about it, ‘maybe our MP should die so that we can have a by-election and therefore we’ll get development’, it is said in jest but it tells you that it completely devalues a very important civic exercise in terms of citizens being able to choose their leader.

“But one could say that after all this the citizens could still make their choices but there are many implications for this type of incumbency abuse and vote buying that is always going to hit us back if we continue down this path. And unfortunately it just needs clear regulation as to the parameters for doing this kind of things,” he said.