Dan Botwe, Minister of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development has expressed confidence that majority of persons nominated by President Akufo-Addo will be confirmed within 10 days from the release of the appointment list.
According to him, the sixteen regional ministers have been instructed to initiate processes in getting the 260 nominees confirmed. This, he revealed, is to help the President achieve his promises to the Ghanaian people.
“We expect the Regional Ministers to carry Mr. President’s communication to the Secretaries of the various Assemblies, inform the Regional Directorates of the Electoral Commission and for that matter the District Directors too and then the process will start.
“By Order 15, within 21 days of receipt of that notice, the confirmation process should start. If we are able to do that this week, I’m sure some of these confirmations can start as early as this week. I expect that within the next 10 days almost all of them should be confirmed”.
Mr Dan Botwe
Additionally, Mr Botwe argued that assembly elections should not be lacking of partisan politics as citizens who are permitted to elect their own Presidents and Members of Parliament must have the same voting power when it comes to Assembly members.
Permit citizens to vote for MMDCEs
Mr Botwe further contended that although Article 55 of the Constitution disallows political interference at the assembly level, as political parties maintained that “we have many of our members who have won the elections”.
Following this, he emphasized that political parties should be made to sponsor nominees in assembly elections.
“The same Ghanaians who go and vote for presidential candidates and elect Presidents, the same Ghanaians go and vote for Parliamentary candidates and elect MPs. The same Ghanaian who can be that sophisticated, you are saying that no, when it comes to assembly elections, let’s not make it partisan.
“It doesn’t make sense. That we shall have the superstructure being partisan and the base, you say should not be partisan. We all know that after elections at the district assembly, political parties come out and say that in the assembly election that we had, we won about 60 per cent even though Article 55 says that don’t sponsor candidates. Parties will tell you that we have many of our members who have won the elections. So, we cannot live in that deceit”.
Mr Dan Botwe
Protests in some parts of the country
Following the President’s release of nominees for the assemblies, there have been protests of some supporters of the governing NPP in the Chereponi and East Mamprusi Districts of the North East Region destroying party properties.
It will also be recalled that some residents in Odododiodoo and Bukom in the Greater Accra Region took to the streets to protest the removal of the current Accra Mayor, Mohammed Nii Adjei Sowah from office.
Touching on this, Mr. Botwe disclosed that the misbehavior of supporters is baseless and unwarranted. With this, he urged the police to arrest and prosecute the protesters who caused destruction to properties.
“It absolutely has no basis at all. That is because somebody came for an interview and he was shortlisted, came to the national level, the Committee recommended that you should be given the position, the President says ‘no, I take the final decision. I think it should be somebody else’ and you think it is a justification for anybody to misbehave, absolutely not”.
Mr Dan Botwe
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