Experts want local govt elections made partisan
Interest and participation in local government issues will increase if local government elections are made partisan, governance experts have said.
They contended that partisan elections would be a means to revive interest in local governance and change the rather low turnout in district assembly elections.
They were speaking at a national stakeholders forum organised by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) on “Media and Accountable Local Governance in Ghana,” last Thursday.
The forum was to highlight the challenges of citizens’ participation in local governance processes and the specific role the media could play in addressing these challenges for effective, participatory and accountable governance in Ghana.
Contributing to the discussions, the Executive Director of the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG), Dr Emmanuel Akwetey, said it was time to rethink the decentralisation system after 27 years of its implementation to ensure that it met its objectives.
“The context and political thoughts that went into the current system have evolved. We made people fail to see they own the system. People want to elect their district chief executives (DCEs), so let’s open up the space and see the elections as a means of reinvigorating local governance,” he said
Arguments
Proponents of the election of metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) argue that giving power to the people to elect heads of the assemblies would make the local leaders accountable to the citizenry. According to them, the current system where MMDCEs openly account only to the president does not augur well for national development.
However, critics of the election of MMDCEs are worried about the working relationship that would arise when a president is elected on one party ticket and DCEs/MCEs on another.
A former President of the National Association of Local Authorities of Ghana (NALAG), Mr George Kyei Baffour, argued that the current system was not helpful since partisan MMDCEs were imposed on the non-partisan structure at the assemblies.
Although the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) recommended the election of MMDCEs on partisan lines, the government’s white paper modified the recommendations.
Under the new guidelines, the president would nominate five candidates for the position of metropolitan, municipal and district assembly (MMDA) chief executives.
Then the names of the nominees would be forwarded to the Public Service Commission.
The commission would then do due diligence on their capabilities through thorough interviewing sessions.
Three candidates are afterwards shortlisted by the commission and presented to the electorate for campaigning and election.
Mr Baffour urged the media not to allow politicians to set the agenda but rather play advocacy roles to make local governance more vibrant than it was today.
The Chairperson of the National Commission for Civic Education, Ms Charllote Osei, urged district assemblies to have more community engagement.
She observed that the country’s media plurality must translate into relevance for the ordinary Ghanaian with respect to local governance.
In spite of the widely acknowledged need for participatory governance and its significance for development, citizens’ participation in the local governance processes at the various MMDAs in Ghana remains minimal.
Although there continues to be various interventions to address this, a critical missing link has been the effective utilisation of the media as a tool to promote the understanding and participation of citizens in governance at the local level.
In that regard, the Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Kwadwo Agyekum, while commending the media for its role in national development, was optimistic that with the growing influence of social media, the assemblies would resort to that to gather inputs into their budgets and development projects.
The Executive Director of the MFWA, Mr Suleiman Braimah, said the “media had a crucial role to play in bridging the gap between local government authorities and their citizens, as they provided platforms for local people to demand accountability from their local leaders and offer their suggestions for community development.”
The occasion was used to launch a guide for the media on local governance and decentralisation in Ghana.