Professor Ransford Gyampo, a lecturer in political science at the University of Ghana, is disputing a directive issued by President Akufo-Addo ordering top management of SOEs and the Electoral Commission (EC) to submit their curriculum vitae (CVs) for evaluation.
According to Professor Gyampo, the EC must be permitted to function independently as required by the Constitution. Speaking for himself, he stated that the 1992 Constitution gives the Commission the sole right to reject the President’s order.
“The Commission is an independent commission, and it is clothed with the necessary legalities to defer orders from the executive President that attempts to undermine the independence of the Commission.”
Professor Ransford Gyampo
Additionally, Professor Gyampo also questioned the rationale behind the President’s request for Director-level and above CV submissions.
“You are asking for their CVs for what? Did the President appoint those Directors? Is he trying to give them an easy job? Or question the authenticity of what they have achieved? Or is he trying to question their promotion processes? These are internal matters that the Commission has internal arrangements to handle. It is not the mandate of the President to be appointing Directors for the Electoral Commission.
“They have their own recruitment systems, and people have been promoted as Directors based on meritocracy. The President is not the one to be appointing Directors to the Commission, so why does he want to exert his tentacles of political ‘king-kongism’ to independent commissions?”
Professor Ransford Gyampo
Strange And Worrisome To Order EC Directors To Submit Their Resumes
Martin Kpebu, a private Attorney characterized President Nana Akufo Addo as weak when it comes to governing, weak on anything related to governing, and claimed that is evident in the manner he (the President) chose his Ministers and other appointees.
Kpebu was participating in the conversation about the alleged directive from the President requiring all Electoral Commission (EC) employees with Director-level or higher positions to submit their resumes and the subsequent letter from Professor Ransford Gyampo to the President requesting that he grants the EC’s independence.
According to Mr. Martin Kpebu, the President’s order is strange and regrettable, since he should have known that the EC is a special organization that acts as the center of Ghana’s democracy and that all Ghanaians support the commission’s independence.
“It is not all who think like him but a larger majority think like him. Naturally, he will select people he can gel with and manipulate. He looks for ‘Yes-Men’ so that whatever he says is final, hence it is not surprising that they don’t speak up.
“I have been wondering, it looks very odd. I don’t even know why on earth the President would want to do such a thing…It is very troubling.”
Martin Kpebu
He continued by saying that should President Akufo Addo ask the newly appointed members of the EC, Salima Ahmed Tijani and Dr. Peter Appiahene, to resign due to accusations that they are NPP sympathizers, the confidence and credibility of the EC of Ghana would be restored.
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