President Nana Add Dankwa Akufo-Addo
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has finally broken his silence over the delay in the appointment of
Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) across the country in the past eight months of his second term.
According to the President, the reason for the delay in the release of the list was because of the betrayal of his party to get the needed support from the leading political party for the election of MMDCEs.
The President who disclosed this on Tamale-based Justice FM, during his recent visit to the Northern region said that he and his team are working at reaching a consensus with regards to the appointments, eight months after he started his second term.
President Akufo-Addo noted that his initial wish for the election of MMDCEs was to vote them into power and not make it the sole preserve of the elected President but that could not be.
He emphasized “As you know my original wish has been that MMDCES will no longer be the patronage of the President and will not be appointed by the President but elected by the people. I thought that it’s time in our history that we took multi-party politics to the local government just as we elect MPs, elect the President, at the local level too let us elect our MMDCEs but unfortunately the party opposite after initially agreeing later pulled out of that understanding
He explained that “It’s been quite an exhaustive process and we are trying to make sure as much as possible we arrive at some consensus about them.”
The President said “I took a view at the time that this is not an issue we should deal with not on NDC and NPP basis. Like the same thing with the regions, the creation of the regions”.
“We needed development of an amendment of our constitution that will have broad National Consensus so when the major opposition party decided to pull out of the agreement for the establishment of the democratic participation in the election of MMDCEs, I felt that we shouldn’t continue the exercise. Let us hope that a time will come when that consensus will allow us to do so” he said.
President Akufo-Addo opined that in his mind there is the need for a broad consultative process in the selection of persons to the various Assemblies across the country.
He underscored that he is currently going through the reports presented to him but the various committees set up for the selection process and that with time, the list will be ready.
– BY Daniel Bampoe