Ahead of Ghana’s 2024 general elections, the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) has rolled out a comprehensive project aimed at curbing vote buying and the abuse of incumbency.
The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) is a non-profit, non-partisan civil society organization committed to combating corruption in Ghana. As the Ghana chapter of Transparency International, GII works to promote transparency, accountability, and integrity in the public and private sectors.
The project, launched in Accra on September 11, 2024, forms part of a broader effort to ensure transparency and fairness during the election period, which allegations of corruption and misuse of power have historically tainted.
The GII’s project, in collaboration with the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) and the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC), will monitor electoral activities in over 100 constituencies across the country. These monitoring efforts will focus on ensuring that state resources are not misused for political campaigns and that candidates abide by campaign finance regulations.
Speaking to the media on Wednesday, 11th September, Programmes Manager of GII, Mary Awelena Addah emphasized the project will be crucial in identifying and documenting instances of vote buying and other forms of electoral misconduct.
“So many of these are the challenges we see. We’ve also seen vote buying increase, we’ve seen a lot of abuses of state’s resources by incumbent governments and incumbent members of parliament. So, in response to these challenges, the Ghana Integrity Initiative Consortium is put together the projects and it’s intended to monitor campaign spending, track the abuse of incumbency and document instances of vote buying during the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections. And we are assured that this would go out there, that the people of Ghana should be aware that the Ghana Integrity Initiative and its partners, the CDD and GACC are out there monitoring in over a hundred constituencies to capture instances of abuse of state resources, abuse of vote buying and also instances of campaign finance violations.”
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Story by: Joycelyn Glory | univers.ug.edu.gh
