Susan Adu-Amankwah, a researcher of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, has charged Ghanaians to punish irresponsible politicians by voting against them during elections.

She said it is time electorates begin to hold politicians accountable by withdrawing their mandate whenever they fail to live up to expectations, and discard having entrenched positions based on the history of political affiliations.

She made these comments during the annual conference of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana (CIMG) in Accra.

According to her, Ghana can only develop if bad politicians are rooted out by the electorates through elections.

The former Vice Chairperson of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) said: “People learn from punishment, you must punish people when they do the wrong thing, and if you allow people to get away with doing the wrong thing and wrong becomes right, they will continue that way.

“This is a country where in certain places, it doesn’t matter the politician, any monkey in a suit will win in that place because it is established that ‘as for us, this is the way we vote, we vote NPP,’ so NPP can put any monkey in a suit there and they will win. That monkey in a suit can be a womaniser, can be a drunkard, can be a thief, can be whatever, once he belongs to that party, it does not matter… He will win. Who is going to learn from that?

“‘I don’t care who I am, I will belong to that party, I will go to that constituency and I will win.’ If we don’t change our behaviour, we are going nowhere. So if politicians are not taking responsibilities for their actions and you are not punishing them, they will continue that way. Once you begin to punish them… Somebody promises you something, you look at it, if it is in his capabilities to keep to that promise and be able to execute it, if not able to execute it explain to you logically why he’s not been able to execute it, you may vote for him or you may not vote for him.”