Here Is Where NDC Cooperation Is Most Needed

If the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority Caucus was really interested in cooperatively collaborating with its New Patriotic Party (NPP) Parliamentary Majority Caucus in the meaningful development of the country, they would have staunchly backed the December 19, 2019 Referendum that sought to constructively democratize the process and system by which our local executive administrators are selected. Instead, the cynical and power-drunken leaders of the country’s main opposition party preferred to maintain the status quo which unsavorily and inadvisably promotes the rankly corrupt system of patronage; and, predictably, these nation-wreckers had the equally self-serving and myopic backing of some our most powerful invested traditional rulers who were regressively ceded an undemocratic quota system of representation in the local assemblies that was primarily rigged up for the exclusive benefit of these effete chieftains at the expense of the genuine and progressive development and socioeconomic uplift in the quality-of-life of their own people.

And now, even as I critically observed at the time when the December 19 Referendum was prematurely and equally inadvisably scrapped by the extant Minister for Regional Reorganization, Mr. Daniel Botwe, if memory serves yours truly accurately, this epic failure to facilitate the healthy and visionary “deepening of democracy at the grassroots level,” as bitterly lamented at the time by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has come back to haunt all of us and vengefully so. If, indeed, the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority Caucus was really interested in the collaborative development of the country with their New patriotic Party Majority Caucus, they would have thrown their full weight behind the very progressive decision to have Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) directly elected by the constituents or residents of their respective administrative jurisdictions. It is this inexcusable failure to engage in constructive dialogue and progressive politics that has resulted in the recent protest demonstrations, for just one striking example, against Dr. Archibald Letsa, Nana Akufo-Addo’s recently reappointed Volta Regional Minister, in the Volta Regional Municipality of Ho (See “Demo Hits Letsa Reappointment in Volta” Modernghana.com 1/25/21).

You see, the direct election of the MMDCEs would have drastically reduced regressive tendency towards rancor and bitterness, incrimination and recrimination among local residents, be they party activists or the local general public at large, as it were. The next step in the local administrative democratization process would have been the direct election of our 16 Regional Ministers and their Lieutenants or Deputies. It probably comes as rather much too late, but I have already proposed in a previous column that an internal party-specific election ought to have been held in which all party members in good standing could have been invited to file their candidacy to contest in the election of all MMDCEs shortly after the 2020 General Election. The same process could have been established for the selection of Regional and Deputy-Regional Ministers. The preceding notwithstanding, one aspect of me intuitively tells me that the so-called Volta NPP Grassroots for Justice organization demonstrating against the reappointment of Dr. Letsa, my PERSCO Senior, may very well be fronting for some mischievous local operatives of the main opposition National Democratic Congress and can therefore not be taken very seriously.

Which is also not the least bit to imply here that, somehow, these vehement party activists and critics may not have any genuine concerns that may very well need to be promptly investigated and effectively and/or satisfactorily addressed, according to the merits of such grievances, of course.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

January 30, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]