Such individuals and institutions which he termed political investors are very dangerous to the Ghanaian economy, urging the citizenry to prevent them from expanding their activities.
“Today, as soon as the President nominates a DCE, he has to spend lot of money to influence or convince the Assembly members to vote for him. He has to go and borrow but where does he get the money from? He ends up taking money from some people who will demand favours in return as soon he gets the nod. So, a contract worth for example GH₵100,000, this person who funded the DCE will now demand that it should be awarded to him at GH₵150,000. This is dangerous”, he noted.
The former Minister of Defense made this observation in an interaction with Fiifi Banson on Anopa Kasapa on Kasapa 102.5 FM.
Kan-Dapaah continuing told Banson that he would be among the first to kick against State funding of political parties when asked to vote on the issue, but wondered whether one has ever quantified the amount the country loses through sole sourcing contracts awarded to political investors.
“If each political party is given US$50 million to finance their campaign with a restriction not to source for additional funding outside their domain … let’s say we have five political parties – we will pay US$250 million for them to do that. But do compare this to the sole source contracts they award – inflated contracts and the thievery. I want to say that the money that we loss because it is given to these political investors will be more than the US$250 million we are talking about”, he averred.
To win the fight against such investors, Mr. Kan-Dapaah proposed that the entire country starts discussing how political parties should be funded in a holistic manner to determine the best way to go about it.
Such discussion, he noted, would help the country to quantify how much money is lost as a results of contracts that are awarded to political investors.
“If we are going to win this war, we need to be able to quantify how much money is lost that goes to political investors – you will realize that this is far bigger than what will be given to finance political parties. Most sole sourcing contracts go to these political investors at the district assembly, regional and national levels”.
