General News of Monday, 9 March 2015
Source: Graphic Online
The leader of the National Democratic Party (NDP), Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, has said there has to be a turning point in the selection of the country’s leaders.
Speaking at a preliminary Breakfast Meeting the NDP organised in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region last week, she pointed out that: “We must all get involved to correct the mistakes of yesterday to avoid choosing wrong leaders either at the local or national level to spare us the ordeal for tomorrow.”
The meeting was chaired by Nana Opoku Aduoni, the Kontihene to Nana Osei Atta, who is in turn the Saasaamohene to Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene.
Mrs Agyemang Rawlings said Ghanaians had got to look at the character of an aspiring leader before voting for that person.
The meeting was organised in collaboration with the Community Organisation Bureaus Network of Ghana (COBNOG) and the Development of Women Movement (DWM) for its members in the region.
According to Mrs Agyeman Rawlings, implementing the 23-year-old 1992 constitutional democracy leaves much to be desired.
This, she pointed out, was also affecting the selection of right leaders for the country.
Mrs Agyeman Rawlings also stated that there was the need to create community organisation networks to help in selecting the right leaders for Ghana.
That, to her, would help breathe some moral transparency into the selection of leaders for the country, especially in the upcoming district assembly elections and the 2016 general elections.
She said Ghana had had the difficulty in selecting the right leader and the “woes of the country through non-performing governments were due to poor and incompetent leadership”.
She placed emphasis on integrity, saying that by having focal groups through community organisation networks, Ghanaian voters would enjoy the pride of place when they were educated on their rights and responsibilities as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution.
She noted that the concept of decentralisation of the country had been undermined, saying that the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) resources, for example, and other development-oriented projects were all controlled by the central government.
She was of the view that metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) were created as a result of the decentralisation concept but expressed worry that without the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF), coupled with the low or no internally generated fund (IGF) of an assembly, the assembly members and the people were left perpetually in their poor living conditions.
She also maintained that there was the need to create the Community Organisation Bureaus (COBs) to help make meaning of decentralisation and the selection of right leaders.
Mrs Agyeman Rawlings disclosed that NDP was preparing the grounds to hold constituency conferences through the inauguration of the COBNOG in each region and that within the next two months the party would be ready for its regional congresses.
For its national congress, she said, a few months after its regional congress had been held, the party would select its national executive officers to plan for a presidential primary to select its presidential candidate.
She was flanked by some national party officers, namely the First National Vice Chairman, Anthony Kusi; the Director of Operations, Seth Gaissie; the Communications Director, Ernest Kofi Owusu Bempah, and the Director of Research, Alhaji Mohammed Frimpong.