Governance advisor ask authorities to be circumspect in appointments

Professor Baffour Agyemang-Duah, a Governance Advisor,has urged authorities to be circumspect in their appointmentsin order to revise the power relations that the 1992 Constitutions has created.

“If the situation is not revised the country will continue to suffer huge challenges since the electoral system has vested too much appointing power in the president and should stop adopting democratic systems that do not favour the country,” he cautioned.

According to him, the country should not tie herself to a system which was supposed to create a neutral body but the authority appoints partisan person into a non-partisan body but the assumption was, once the person becomes a president, he becomes father of the nation, statesman and non-partisan.

“We should not tie ourselves to a system which is supposed to create a neutral body and yet the one who appoints members into that body is partisan, we can assumeonce a person becomes a president, becomes father of the nation and statesman but it does not work for us,” Prof. Agyeman-Duah proffered.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Agyekum Kufuor Foundation, added his voice to the proposal of former President Mahama to amend the section of the Constitution and compel the president to submit nominees to Parliament for approval.

Prof. Agyeman-Duah stated that creation of the electoral system had placed the appointing authority in the president which could not cure challenges with the electoral system however, there were different systems around the world that Ghana could observe and adopt which would improve the country, rather than picking just any system that does not work for the nation.

“There are other models constituting elections around the world, we can look at various models and make a determined decision, one interesting issue about democracy that all of us tend to miss is democratic practice is not strait-jacket and the fact that it was practiced in a country does not mean it should be done in another country but we are always adopting systems that do not favour us,” he bemoaned.

Prof. Agyeman-Duah asked appointing authorities to be mindful of their appointing choices and procedures because the people they trusted could disappoint them because even the person they appoint could disappoint them.