Establish District Development Advisory Councils — Jonah
A Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG), Mr Kwesi Jonah, has advocated the establishment of District Development Advisory Councils at the local government level, modelled after the constitutional body, the Council of State.
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The District Development Advisory Councils would comprise chiefs and other marginalised groups in local governance, and provide the opportunities for such groups to effectively participate in governance without breaching the law.
Mr Jonah gave the suggestion at a day’s retreat on local governance reform in Accra on Wednesday on the theme: “Democratic devolution strengthens developmental governance.”
Organised by IDEG with the support of the Africa Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), OSIWA, OXFAM IBIS and Mondelez International, the retreat brought together stakeholders in local governance, public service and civil society organisations to discuss modalities for getting municipal, metropolitan and district chief executives (MMDCEs) elected into office along multi-party lines.
District advisory councils
In the proposal for District Development Advisory Councils, Mr Jonah said it would give the chiefs the dignity of participating effectively in the development of their communities, while ensuring that there was no departure from the constitutional provision of chiefs not engaging in active party politics.
Mr Jonah also proposed that the 30 per cent members appointed by the government to the various assemblies should be abolished.
That was because the original intention of the policy, that is, to fill the assemblies with technical experts, was now being abused.
“The provision has now become an instrument of political patronage,” he told participants.
In its place, Mr Jonah proposed the election of members on the basis of the mixed proportional representation system.
He explained that the system ensured the reservation of seats exclusively for a category of persons, thus, qualified persons for the particular seats would go through the normal elections to fill them.
Political parties would be the organisations to ensure that the right calibre of persons were fielded to be elected for those particular seats.
Technical actions
The Dean of the Faculty of Law of the University of Ghana, Legon, Prof. Kofi Quashigah, in his presentation on “Technical Actions: Referendum Processes and outcomes,” detailed the constitutional provisions on decentralisation and multi-party participation that needed to go through a referendum to be amended and those that did not require that.