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A Letter To The Head Of Cabinet

By Agnes Ansah
Opinion A Letter To The Head Of Cabinet
OCT 24, 2014 LISTEN

Its burdens my heart to see how the leaders we hold in high esteem and have trusted this country to don't take decisions that will help in the long run but rather take decisions that is applicable only for a short while. The consequences of their actions are what we are experiencing now.

The economic hardship we are experiencing recently is not because someone removed some four zeros from a thousand or the incompetency of the incumbent government. This is the result of some decisions we took since the inception of the 1992 constitution which no one has seen anything wrong with it till now. Governments go and come but none has been able to correct this mistakes.

Chapter 10,article 94 and its sub clauses of the 1992 constitution states clearly the requirements one should have in order to qualify as a Member of Parliament. Clause 1a state that a person qualifies as a member of parliament if “he is a citizen of Ghana, has attained the age of twenty- one years and is a registered voter”.

Clause 1b of this same article state that if “he is a resident from the constituency which he stands as a candidate for election to parliament or has resided there for a total period of not less than five yearsout of the ten years immediately preceding the election for which he stands, or he hails from the constituency” then he qualifies as a member of parliament. But to me these requirements are not enough.

A person's academic performance and experience should be a key factor in determine who becomes an MP this is becauseministers are drawn from among members of parliament. Al though it makes provision for persons qualified to be members of parliament to be appointed as ministers, it states categorically that the majority should be members of parliament. This ministers together with other government implement laws for the country so that is why we can't allow any school dropout to go to parliament just because he has money or able to meet some requirements by the constitution.

But have you also taken a critical look at the clause 2d of this same article 94? It state that a person shall not qualify to be a member of parliament if “he has been found by the report of a commission or a committee of inquiry to be incompetent of holding public office or is a person in respect of whom a commission or a committee has found that while being a public officer he acquired assets unlawfully or defrauded the state or mis-used or abused his office, or willfully acted in manner prejudicial to the interest of the state, and the findings have not been set aside on appeal or judicial review”.

If we have such a clause in our constitution why do we keep having incompetent people as our heads of institutions and department? Does this mean our committee of inquiry is not performing up to expectations? I leave you to battle with it while I move on.

Ministerial appointment is also an issue to reckon with. I suggest that a minister's portfolio should be in relation to the work experience of that minister. For instance a health minister should be someone who has an in-depth knowledge about health issues. You can't appoint someone who doesn't know that we put a measuring cylinder on a tripod stand as a health minister and expect the person to deliver to perfection. No it doesn't happen anywhere unless voodoo is involve but that is not the issue in our Ghanaian government. Just go delve into most of these ministers files and you realize some don't have any idea about the office they are heading. This situation has resulted in bad performance and failure.

Then the government comes in with the issue of reshuffling thinking that will solve the problem but to me that only worsen the case.Changing or swapping people to head different portfolios within a 4 year reign won't make any different. As our elders say “the bird that flies from the ground and still lingers on the ant hill is still on the ground”.Whoever knows anything about strategic planning and action plan will not reshuffle in the middle of events. I am not going to go into details about what strategic plan and action plan means I leave that to those who need tutorials on that to see The Dean of Student of Ghana Institute of Journalism.

For me I think reshuffle should aim at these things;

Replace ministers who have retired or died.
Remove poor performers
Reward the performers and
Punish none performers. Anything apart from these suggestions should be out of reshuffling

I think it's time our leaders put a stop to copy and paste and create something for others to copy. Seeing someone change and swap ministers doesn't mean it will help if you should also do that. Do you know on which basis the person reactions are?

This constitution was written by someone and can be changed when necessary .Lets make decisions that will help this country.

The writer is a student- journalist at the Ghana Institute of journalism.

Email:[email protected].

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