Opinions of Sunday, 17 September 2006
Columnist: Amankwah, Nana Kofi
Kufuor Keep Your Promise
The residents of Kumasi and other parts of the nation should not live in a state of shock because of a president who could not keep his promises, and instead governed the nation to serve his own selfish political interests.
John Agyekum Kufuor won his first election in 2000. In 2001, he came to New York City to meet the Ghanaian community at Hunter College in New York where he held a town hall meeting with questions and answers. A Ghanaian political science professor asked Kufuor if it was unconstitutional for him to continue the policies of the previous NDC administration. Previously, presidents had used his administrative powers to appoint chief executives without the ballot box. Kufuor made a promise to the audience that his administration would amend our constitution to bring a bout change so that a president could not use his executive powers for these appointments any more.
Kufuor, admitted that the rights of these people had been violated when chief executives were merely appointed. The people should be allowed to decide which candidate they want for their constituencies. After almost six years in office, Agyekum Kufuor has done nothing to resolve these serious political issues in our nation.
Kufour has the tendency to appoint people who are not competent for positions such as handling our local economic and policy issues. Even if citizens complained about the dubious activities of his appointees, Kufuor did nothing to resolve it. Kufour is not part of the solution but part of our socioeconomic dilemma.
The president and the members of the Parliament should enact laws that will also allow our local legislators to be paid on monthly basis as the president and other Parliamentarians. How can the government pay a person who was not elected by the people and disregard the assembly members who were elected by the citizens from their constituencies? This is a wrong policy from the government that needs to be changed for the local level to govern effectively. If not this chief executive will continue to find a way to bribe some assembly members to cover their dubious activities.
I advise the people of Kumasi not to be anxious about the KMA finances. In years to come, the former KMA chief executive of NDC’S fame, Akwasi Agyeman and Patricia Appiagyei and others will face criminal charges. My light will continue to burn and so will yours because we’re all in this together to fix Kumasi Metropolitan assembly. To gether we will bring widespread system change…. to make the government work again for the people. As soon as John Agyekum Kufour leaves office, we shall bring all these criminals to the court of justice for their involvements in financial sufferers of Kumasi Metropolitan assembly.
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