EC Must Reduce Filing Fees For Small Parties And Independent Candidates – Awingobit Pleads

A flagbearer aspirant of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Sampson Asaki Awingobit, has pleaded with the Electoral Commission (EC) to be party conscious with the pegging of presidential filing fees.

This comes off the back of the EC’s announcement of a 100% increase in filing fees for presidential candidates in the upcoming December polls.

In an interview with Citi News, Mr. Awingobit, expressed concern that the high fees could price out smaller parties from the polls.

“Why wouldn’t they segment and say the bigger political parties should pay a GHS100,000 and the smaller political parties pay GHS50,000,” he asked?

For independent candidates, he said the EC could further “reduce it to like GHS20,000 or GHS10,000 for them.”

His call according to him is in service of preserving Ghana’s standing as a multi-party democracy.

“That shows that Ghana and the EC itself is protecting the constitution which says we need to practice multi-party democracy,” Mr. Awingobit said.

Meanwhile the EC has stated that the fee is justifiable looking at the rate of the cedi since 2016.

Source: GhanaFeed.Com