Monday,
July 9, 2012
The announcement that the
government is optimistic about the benefits of having Chief Executive Officers
of Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies elected is remarkable. But other
aspects of that announcement reduce that optimism to absurdity. By and large, the new approach will frustrate
local governance, which is why I regard the announcement as irritating.
That announcement has many
aspects but I will discuss only one, which confirms to me that those we have
put in charge of our national affairs are a major part of the problems
militating against our development efforts. Instead of solving problems, they
either compound them or create new ones to torment us when they leave office.
A Deputy Minister of Local
Government, Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah, is reported at saying at Anfoega that the
election of the CEOs would replace the current method by which they are
appointed by the President.
Taken on its face value, the
intention toward electing the CEOs may be applauded; but the rationale, motive,
and implications are obnoxious. That is why the government’s announcement must
not be celebrated. It is not worth anybody’s bother at this point because of
its obvious evil political nature.
Under the proposed method,
according to the Deputy Minister, “the
president would nominate five people to be interviewed by the Public Services
Commission. Out of the five, he said, three candidates would be shortlisted for
election by registered voters in the districts” (Ghanaweb, July 9, 2012).
Nothing
is ever more nauseating than this proposition. The government is acting with
impunity and insulting the intelligence of the citizens. What is it that should
deny the citizens the opportunity to choose their own CEOs right from scratch
without any interference from the President? And who says that the President
best knows who will serve the needs of the citizens to prescribe nominees?
In
this sense, then, any perceived benefits of the method—as the Deputy Minister
glibly stated—won’t be appreciated. Who cares whether the tenure of the CEOs is
secured? Or whether the method will lessen the weight of lobbying at the
Presidency for such positions?
Invariably,
the new method entails the very ills that it might seek to eradicate. On the
whole, therefore, it is only designed to strengthen the appointing arm of the
President at a higher level, refined as a constitutional provision, and to
thicken the bureaucracy. It is loaded with treachery and subterfuge.
Where did that recommendation
come from, in the first place? The Constitution Review Commission or the
government itself? If it’s from the CRC, it’s worth considering as the dumbest
recommendation ever made because it defeats the exact purpose of local
governance.
Even if the Local Government Law,
Act 462, doesn’t have any room for the election of the CEOs for the
Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies—which might deceive us into
seeing this recommendation as an innovation—we needn’t go any further from the
immediate negative implications of the recommendation to see it as a major flaw
in local governance efforts.
What business does the President
have to do with the desire of the citizens at the local level to choose their
own administrators who are expected to be conversant with the development needs
at that third tier of the local government system?
If local government means placing
local governance in the hands of the people, what business should the President
have in determining who should be the CEO at the local level? Don’t the local
people know who among them can steer affairs properly to solve their problems
of underdevelopment?
By arrogating to the President
this power to nominate five potential CEOs, this recommendation really waters
down the force of local government. Why is it necessary for the President to
nominate anybody at all? And why five? Or why pare the number down to three?
How will the President even know who the eligible local citizens are to nominate
them, in the first place? Certainly, some partisan political interests will
poison the process. Doesn’t the President already have his plate too full
already to be bothered with this additional assignment?
There are too many questions. Can’t
the Electoral Commission be made the overseer of this process and mechanisms
put in place for interested candidates to file their nomination and be vetted
as such before contesting the elections?
What we need for this purpose are
structures to facilitate the process, not the involvement of a President whose
political bias will definitely poison the entire process and impose needless
bureaucratic bottlenecks on it. In sum, we don’t need the President’s fiat to
determine who qualifies at the local government level. If the political will is
available, it should be used to enhance this process, not forestall any genuine
effort to streamline local governance.
The fact is that those in
authority are wary of their powers being whittled away by a truly elective
process that won’t defer to their parochial interests. The Ghanaian politician
in authority is reluctant to cede power and will use subterfuge to hang on to
compound problems. That’s exactly what this recommendation portends. But we
shouldn’t sit down unconcerned for anything of this sort to derail the process
toward demystifying governance and empowering the people at the local level to
take their destiny into their own hands.
The days when everybody had to
look up to the President for pittance should be over. The real producers of the
national wealth are at the local level and they must be given what they need to
call the shorts as far as determining how to ensure local level development is
concerned. After all, that’s the rationale behind the decentralization
programme. That is why I am concerned that civil society organizations and
public figures haven’t yet reacted vigorously to the government’s piecemeal
approach to this issue.
One expects that they will wade
in to ensure that the government doesn’t make itself the final judge in
determining which aspects of the CRC’s provisions to accept or reject and place
before the citizens at a referendum. Indeed, if the amendment of obnoxious
aspects of the Constitution should be done smoothly to serve useful purposes,
the government shouldn’t be the sole authority to make decisions as is being
done per its White Paper. Choosing and picking which recommendation of the CRC
to accept or reject isn’t the government’s purview.
It is wrong for the government to
arrogate to itself any power to do so. Having spent so much on the collection
and collation of suggestions, the government should have been sensitive enough
to the will of the people and placed the CRC’s report before Parliament for
debate and decisions on what should be included in the final body of
recommendations for the citizens to vote on. We have already seen the
weaknesses in this Constitution and agreed that steps be taken toward an
amendment.
Those entrenched aspects of the
Constitution that can be amended only through a referendum should particularly
have been left for open debate in Parliament and the public domain before any
final decision is made. Parliament is constituted by the elected
representatives of the people; it has the mandate to debate issues and enact
laws as such to control behaviour in the country. The government is made up of
all kinds of people whose interests don’t necessarily correspond to those of
the citizens. We know who they are and how they function for parochial partisan
political purposes and will be worried that they have now usurped Parliament’s
role in this matter.
As the situation is now, the
government has hijacked that role and is acting arbitrarily to its own advantage
while compounding the problem. That’s not how to strengthen our democracy.
If the local government system is
to function properly, it must be supported with good political thinking and
logistics. There is nothing wrong if procurement of logistics, infrastructural
development, enactment and enforcement of bye-laws, and many other acts of governance
are left to the local government machinery to initiate. But those in affairs at
the central government won’t yield grounds because doing so will deprive them
of the opportunity to grab kickbacks from contracts and procurement of
logistics for the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies.
Contrary to what happens
elsewhere, this new method of electing local administrators will be fraught
with problems. The electoral process must help candidates contest elections and
be voted on by the electorate without recourse to any interference from the President.
The Electoral Commission has regional and district offices all over the country
and must be retooled for that purpose. The government’s role is to provide
logistics and the congenial atmosphere for the elections, not to impose its
will on the people.
Taking this election of local
administrators a step further, it should be possible for Regional Ministers and
their Deputies too to be elected. The current arrangement by which the
President appoints a third of members of the Assemblies must also be abolished.
If the President wants to secure his tenure and win a re-election bid, it must
not depend on mere political patronage but remarkable accomplishments.
Those wary that political rivalry
will compound problems if the election of local government officials is left
unrestrained have no case. If the central government does its work properly, it
shouldn’t be scared that its political rivals will be elected at the second and
third tiers to frustrate or subvert its administration.
This suggestion concerning the
election of CEOs was first mooted by the NPP but was ridiculed by some sections
of the society because it was initially considered as a pipe dream. Now that
the NDC administration has seen sense in it and is optimistic of its benefits,
it should do what will make it feasible. Anything short of that will worsen the
problem. Can anybody in authority ever wear his thinking cap at the proper
angle to separate the trees from the forest?
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