Unmeritorious feuds
People are like dirt. They either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die. Plato . In 2009, Prof. John Evans Atta Mills was hailed and lauded when he directed that district chief executives at post before he became President should remain at post until their successors were appointed to take over from them.
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Well-meaning Ghanaians saw that as a mark of a great leader minded to foster national unity.
Unfortunately, the forward-looking decision was not allowed to work by supporters of the National Democratic Congress, who felt that only members of the party qualified to occupy public offices. Most of the appointees were hounded and haunted out of office. Those who braved the storm merely went to warm the chairs in their offices and never took any action.
Six years down memory lane another opportunity to demonstrate nationalism and [promote some inclusiveness has come under fire. The purported appointment of four perceived loyalists of the New Patriotic Party, who have purportedly crossed carpet to join the National Democratic Congress to serve on the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly, has been condemned by some supporters of the NDC who do not understand why a non-member of the party should be appointed to serve as an assembly member.
We need to review our understanding and appreciation of constitutional democracy. The principles which underline the foundations of our Constitution is non-discrimination of all hues and colours. Article 17(3) is unequivocal and unambiguous. It states that ,“ for the purposes of this article, discriminate means to give different treatment to different persons attributable only or mainly to their respective descriptions by race, place of origin, political opinions, colour, gender, occupation, religion or creed, whereby persons of one description are subjected to disabilities or restrictions to which persons of another description are not made subject or are granted privileges or advantages which are not granted to persons of another description”.
Perhaps this unmeritorious protest has come about because we have failed to properly develop a transparent and open mode of consultation between the President and the traditional authorities and interest groups in the districts as required by Article 242(e).
Indeed, it is the same lack of openness and transparency that could motivate those who act in the name of the President to cheat on the number of appointments to be made to the assembly by the President. Article 242 determines the members, one person from each local government electoral area within the district elected by universal adult suffrage, the member or members of Parliament from the constituencies that fall within the area of authority of the District Assembly as members without the right to vote, the District Chief Executive of the district and other members not being more than 30 per cent of all the members of the District Assembly, appointed by the President in consultation with the traditional authorities and other interest groups in the district.
In 1993 when appointments were made without recourse to particularly the traditional authorities, some of them protested and boycotted the inauguration of the assemblies. This compelled the government to initiate dialogue with the authorities and Mr Kwamina Ahwoi as the then Minister of Local Government offered to meaningfully consult the relevant bodies for their input into the appointment process. It appears that was an empty promise and a nine-day wonder. Governments, probably district chief executives and a few party executives have hijacked such an important process to recruit only compliant and loyalists to the assemblies.
After 22 years of the Constitution, we should have evolved time tested and objective standards for the appointment of the members and established the numbers with certainty. The electoral areas are known, so also are the members of Parliament within the district and the district chief executive. Therefore, if we were minded to be fair ,there should be no controversy as recruiting a maximum of 30 per cent of the assembly members, especially since human beings can only be counted in full as absolute numbers.
In some of the assemblies, the complaint coming is that DCEs have selected their cronies. In the particular case of Talensi, the agitations are rooted in the allegation that those who supported the MP, Mr B.T. Baba against the DCE in the last bye-election have all being ignored and that only those who supported the DCE have been appointed.
The present undefined path towards the selection of the government appointees favour the DCEs, since they are among those who could readily approve the DCEs when the time comes. That might even be related to the cheatings which go on when more than 30 per cent of the members are appointed instead of the maximum of not more than thirty per cent of all the members of the assembly.