The president of policy think tank, IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe has taken a swipe at the Electoral Commission over the reasons it gave for pegging the filing fee for presidential aspirants at GHS100,000.
He believes the decision is not backed by any research.
“The EC itself has this perennial behaviour of making commentary without any basis in science or economics. So I’m not entirely surprised that my good friend, the EC boss, said [The high filing fee] is just in keeping with the inflationary trends so because of that the fees are not static,” he said.
Franklin Cudjoe made the remark on Citi FM/Citi TV’s current affairs analysis programme, The Big Issue, on Saturday.
He further insisted that the EC’s justification for increasing the filing fee is untenable.
“You see they are paid from our taxes, so they cannot be telling us that because they are running losses they need to make up for their losses.”
Background
The Electoral Commission (EC) opened nominations for the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections last week.
The Commission announced GHS100,000 as filing fees for presidential candidates; a 100% increment from the GHS50,000 fee charged in 2016.
It also announced a GHS10,000 filing fee for parliamentary candidates.
Several persons have rebuked the EC over the amount, describing it as too high.
But a Deputy Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Dr. Bossman Eric Asare insisted that the increment is in tandem with the value of the currency.
“In each particular year, it is important you look at the value of GHS50,000 in 2016, then compare it to GHS50,000 in 2020 then you will notice that the Commission has not increased it much. And even when you look at the [filing fee for] parliamentary [aspirants], the GHS10,000, you will realise that the Commission has reduced the price because we all know that GHS10,000 in 2016, is not the same as GHS10,000 in 2020. The Commission is doing this to promote multiparty democracy.”
