Following the cracking of the whip by President J.E.A. Mills on 13 Municipal and District Chief Executives, those who escaped the President’s whip, and are still at post are under intense blackmail by party executives.
The Enquirer newspaper without any fear of contradiction can say that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party executives in some constituencies are making demands that can simply not be met by the respective MMDCEs.
Apart from the party executives, contractors are also plainly blackmailing the MMDCEs. The Enquirer last Monday received a phone call from two DCEs, who would not like to be named, one in the Ashanti Region and the other from the Eastern Region, cataloguing how the party executives are harassing them.
The DCE, from the Ashanti Region, who spoke to The Enquirer for almost one hour, said that the party chairman in his area came to him demanding a vehicle to use as a taxi. “My brother, my attempt to explain to him that his demand amounts to blackmail made him to go haywire,” he said.
He told The Enquirer that, immediately after that, the party chairman met with other party executives and hatched a plan to write a letter about him to The Presidency. “One of them hinted me but he too came with another demand that he needed some ¢20 million for his farming activities,” he added.
According to him, since the President fired the 13 DCEs he has known no peace. “The worst of it all is that ‘wait and see’ is now the catchphrase of the party executives in my area,” he added. He told The Enquirer that the party executives are also in league with certain contractors who are peddling lies about him.
“In my quest to have quality projects the contractors are also blackmailing me,” he said.
On the part of the DCE from the Eastern Region, he said that the heat on him was simply unthinkable. “My party executives that I have been working with are now treating me like a stranger and are making demands that the assembly cannot meet,” he said. He told The Enquirer that it was becoming clear that some of the party executives want to even demand their housekeeping money from him. “They are forgetting that the President appointed us to serve the people and that they feel that apart from them I should not attend to any other person in my office,” he said.
He told The Enquirer that on one particular Sunday while he was in church, a party executive followed him there with a demand because he could not meet him at his office the previous Friday. “My explanation to him that I was in Accra for urgent meeting and that he should come to the office the next day made him angry and he started with the ‘wait and see’ thing,” he said.