'Our campaign weapon is education not money' - Goosie Tanoh

Delegates of the opposition National Democratic Congress wishing to cash in on the forthcoming primary election for aspiring Presidential candidates will be disappointed as candidate Goosie Tanoh will prefer education to doling out of money.

Mr Tanoh, an aspirant in the contest has stated categorically that he will not ‘’bribe’’ any delegate to vote for him.

Addressing delegates, party elders and serving party officials in the Upper West region during a campaign tour, Mr Goosie Tanoh, a founding member of the NDC publicly declared that he was not in the contest to buy-votes as has been the practice of some politicians in Ghana and other countries across the globe.

A determined Goosie Tanoh told delegates at Jirapa and Nandom that “our campaign weapon is not money but education” insisting that he was not prepared to dole out money to the surprise and amusement of delegates who listened attentively.

The internal elections of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has been hit with allegations of vote buying with videos and pictures circulating of delegates receiving monies and items such as sewing machines, flat screen television sets, motorbikes, gas cookers from aspirants in return for their votes.

The phenomena is however in no way unique to the NDC as other political parties are believed to be profiting from the same.

Mr Tanoh has been vociferous in his campaign against the vote buying that had been blamed for reducing Ghana’s democracy to a ‘moneycracy’; on sale to the highest bidder and labelled the phenomena as disgraceful and advised NDC’s delegates against allowing themselves to be ‘bought’ by persons he described as ‘greedy and corrupt’ elements within the party.

The Flagbearer aspirant is convinced that selling the party to the highest bidder would rob the NDC of competent candidates in the near future.

According to him, all 39,000 communities dotted across the country could not develop without proper education and that he was determined to give education to voters rather than inducing them with home appliances and physical cash to win the flagbearership slot of the party.

He said vote-buying had negative repercussions on voters, future of their dependents as well as forward march of a middle income country such as Ghana and called on delegates to reject bribes because it only gave Presidential candidates the power to manipulate them.

Mr Tanoh has however charged delegates to critically examine the campaign messages of various aspirants to inform their decision on whom to entrust the fortunes of the party as NDC was poised for victory 2020.

He said the party could only achieve that if a trusted candidate won the upcoming presidential primaries.

Mr Goosie Tanoh is one of over 12 aspirants including; former President John Dramani Mahama, who is hoping to become the next Flagbearer for the biggest opposition party going into the 2020 elections.

In August 2018, Goosie Tanoh formally announced his decision to contest the Flagbearer position of the NDC, when he presented his letter of intent to the party’s General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia.