One Ghana Cedi For The Ballot

There’s this “thing” in Ghana that I never understand. From why it’s like that and why it’s even being done like that in the first place. In Ghana, you need a voter’s ID card to vote and you can only get that card if you’re 18 years and above. That’s a normal thing right? Now, come with me. Wherever you acquire your voter’s ID is where you register to cast your vote. Do you know what that means? It means every time there’s elections, you’d have to find your way to that place you registered just to be able to vote.

For someone like me who doesn’t stay at one place, that means no voting for me. You don’t expect me to travel across the country on those same bad roads the government has given thousand and seventy-five promises to fix just to cast my vote for that same government again. The funny part is where I would have to go and stand in a long queue under this unfriendly sun for hours, oh come on.

If I have a voter’s ID card and I can’t vote anywhere in the country as a citizen of the country, then what’s the point of the card and my citizenship? That’s even the least of the problems. I don’t want to talk about the part where people take money to vote and that’s where I got my title from. Some years back, people used to collect as low as 1 cedi or even yoghurt to vote for candidates. I don’t even blame them, the economy is nothing to write home about.

About some months ago, there was this video where the polling agents were caught on national television, receiving a huge brown envelope from one of the candidates. What happened was that, there was journalist on site with his team capturing the elections live and then the whole thing happened behind them. Meaning, the candidates and the polling agents did not even realize the camera there. It took them by “rapture”.

The candidate was disqualified and all but to me it only means there’s a whole lot behind the scene. I mean we only had the opportunity to see this but what about the ones we didn’t see? From what I heard, that particular candidate has been in power for that constituency for a really long time. Can you imagine? So what happened to people’s votes? Looks like huge brown envelopes nullified them.

I know every vote makes a difference and of course my vote could go a long way. On the other hand, there’s absolutely no point if my vote won’t even be recognized or counted just because one polling agent received one huge envelope. There’s no point if my vote would automatically end up invalid just because the majority of the people received digestive biscuits and coke to come and vote for one particular person.

There’s absolutely no point if my vote will become invalid because they already know who will win before they even count the ballot sheets. Majority would rather take 1 Ghana cedi for their pockets than cast sincere votes, so I’ll also just be observing from afar.