The Media has been called upon to integrate the fight against Serious and Organized Crimes (SOC) and the threats it poses to Ghana into their coverage of news ahead of elections 2024.
The call was made at Workshop organized by the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) in Accra on Wednesday (February 5, 2024.
The Executive Secretary of the GACC, Madam Beauty Emefa Narteh who made the call stressed that this is to safeguard Ghana’s stability since SOC poses a serious of threat to our elections.
She revealed that campaign financing and elections related corruption arise out of SOC adding that there is a data from CDD that lends to that credence.
“We aim to fortify the government architecture in fighting against illicit funds”, Madam Narteh re-iterated.
The Executive Director therefore appealed to the media to prioritize SOC issues in their editorials in the lead up to 2024 elections.
Later, a Deputy Head of Prosecution at EOCO, Leo Anthony Asiamah revealed that the effects of SOC increase public sector corruption and undermine the integrity of our elections.
He called for a multi-faceted approach in combating this cancer maintaining that EOCO doing it’s part to curb the menace.
On his part, the Director of Research and Communications at the Office of the Special Prosecutor(OSP), Sammy Darko advised the media to always tease out the particular crime they
are writing about rather than boxing all of them under corruption.
He indicated that fraud, vote buying, elections financing are forms of corruption related crimes adding it was important to indicate specific crime to enable law enforcement agencies like the OSP to confront it head on.
He said the OSP has investigated a lot of public officials over unexplained wealth and other elections related corruption but often times their impediments have been the courts.
“ You hear people say the OSP should have investigated before going to court but the law states that freeze first and investigate”, he noted.
Mr. Kweku Krobea Asante of the Media Foundation of West Afrcia stressed the need for the media to dig deep into sources of campaign funding and Party financing.
This, he said is the only way elections related corruption which is a threats to our elections can be curtailed.
Source: Newsflashafrica.com
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