Over Burdening Parliamentarians With Constant Monetary Demands

The New Publisher would not pretend to have the solution to this corruption-prone challenge where Members of Parliament in Ghana are constantly under siege for money and other forms of assistance that require doling out cash.

A failure or inability to provide the requested money would most often lead to all forms of threats including “we won’t vote for you again”.

If this is not blackmail, then we wonder what it is.

The question is how many Parliamentarians can sustain such demands and the continuous nature of it? What are the income levels of Ghanaian Parliamentarians that it has become a convention, across political parties, that they are the ones to pay all manner of bills for constituents?

Bills that range from school fees for University students, rent, apprenticeship fees to learn a skill or trade, utility bills, mortuary, coffin and cost of funeral, transportation to wherever for whoever, money for the dentist, food, church roof, brass band, clothes, shoes, mobile phones, capital to start a business, repayment of personal loans and all sorts of ridiculous demands.

These never-ending demands come from thousands of constituents every single day and the MP is expected to meet these demands or face the wrath of the people.

It is an extremely worrisome challenge detrimental to the country’s democracy.

It is a scary attitude that has kicked out several fine brains from the country’s Parliament not because they were not effective in their contributions to the mandate of the Legislative body, but chiefly because they were not financially fortified enough to fund the never ending demands from their constituents.

The direct implication is that the finest of brains cannot enter Parliament unless the fine brains belong to a person with deep pockets. The flip side of that any lobster-head soul with deep pockets that contain a never-ending flow of money enough to burn, can very easily get elected into Parliament and retained multiple times as long as they cash keeps flowing.

It is a destructive attitude that has to stop if we are to grow as a thriving democracy.

The elected Member of Parliament is not a financier of the private and personal needs and wants of constituents. If any MP decides to embark of such acts of charity, that is what it is, CHARITY and not an obligation.

Sadly, we as a people have made it an obligation and given it more value than what should be the actual duty of the MP.

Some of our Parliamentarians have both brains and enough money to sustain their campaigns and the demands of the people. But even that comes at a cost.

We believe it is time we started a proper conversation on what should actually be the duties of a Member of Parliament, who a good Member of Parliament is and the effects of over burdening them the never-ending demands for money.