This dirty Politics must stop

Last week Thursday we carried a front-page story about the alleged confusion surrounding the election of Mr. Wahab Suhiyini Wumbei as parliamentary candidate for the Tolon constituency in the Northern Region.

Apart from the allegation by his accusers that Mr. Wumbei used money to influence the delegates who voted for him, they also alleged that he used his position as DCE of the area to influence the outcome of the election. Mr. Wumbei's accusers went further to state that ever since he came into office he had not initiated a single project to the benefit of the people and that he was incompetent to lead the Assembly and bring development to the District.

In his reaction, Mr Wumbei told our Northern Regional Correspondent that all the allegations levelled against him were baseless and that he had never used his office to influence the outcome of the election as alleged by his opponents. On The allegation that he failed to bring a single development project to the people ever since he assumed office as DCE, he explained that he came to meet a number of projects that had already been awarded on contract by his predecessor amounting to over three billion cedis.

He said looking at the nature of the project he had no option than to continue by suspending the initiation of new projects. Chronicle is not much concerned with the internal politics going on in the constituency. Our concern is the accusation that the DCE had done nothing ever since he came into office and the explanation he has also given to justify why he has not initiated any project on his own.

Though relevant laws of the land have made it clear that all projects initiated by one particular government should be continued by the one who takes over from the previous one, the opposite is what we see in this country. Indeed when Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown his Government was demonized and most of the projects he had initiated were suspended. The trend continued when the current Government also came into office.

NDC has on a number of occasions complained that the NPP Government had suspended projects they started. The same complaints were made at the district level throughout the country. But do we have to blame the NPP Government and its DCEs for suspending projects initiated by their predecessors? The question is obviously NO because bad precedents have already been set when it comes to such issues.

Chronicle believes that it is about time we put an end to such bad practice, which only retrogress the development of this country. A project initiated by your opponent is part of the development agenda for this country so why suspend it? This is a waste of our resources and we as a country should condemn it in no uncertain terms.

In the case of the Tolon DCE were his opponents aware that he had decided to continue with projects started by his predecessor amounting to over three billion cedis and if they were aware, is it not a sign of hypocrisy for them to go and tell the whole country that he had done nothing ever since he came into office? After practicing democracy for fifteen or so years now it about time we threw away such amateurish ways of going about our politics because it would not bring about any development to this country.

If opponents of Mr Wumbei have nothing against him, they should stop disturbing our ears with such flimsy excuses. Chronicle would however want to state clearly here that if indeed DCE Wumbei did influence the voters with money as he is being accused of doing then we are not in support of that. Already one of the NPP presidential aspirants, Mr. Hackman Owusu Agyemang has come out to condemn the practice and we agree with his opinion on this matter.