PROPOSAL TO ELECT DCEs DANGEROUS TO DEV — AHWOI (PAGE 14, JULY 26, 2010)

A Principal Lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Mr Kwamena Ahwoi, has cautioned against proposal to elect District Chief Executives (DCEs), describing it as dangerous and detrimental to development.
Delivering a lecture on “One step forward, the significance of Legislative Instrument (L.I.) 1961 in MMDAS capacity building,” Mr Ahwoi said there was the need for a competent and qualified DCE to face the challenges of decentralisation and the assemblies.
Delivering the lecture at Cape Caost, Mr Ahwoi said if care was not taken, electing DCE’s could compromise efficiency for mediocrity.
He cited the case of an assembly where a conservancy labourer beat a popular lawyer in an election and described the scenario as a case of popularity against competence which is not what the assembly is looking for.
He said another area of serious concern with the election of DCE’s is discipline, respect for authority and their removal.
Mr Ahwoi said for instance in the Ashanti Region, if DCE’s were to be elected, the NDC was likely to get about only three to head the assemblies whilst in the Volta Region the likelihood was that the NDC might sweep the assemblies.
He said under such circumstances, the allegiance, discipline and respect for authority might be compromised.
Besides, it would be difficult to remove them in the event of the above reasons since they were elected and had the mandate of the people and not appointed.
He explained that it was the presence of the government appointees which had politicised the assemblies coming immediately after the 2000 elections when all government appointees were withdrawn for fear that they were appointed by the previous government and that they might not vote for government nominated DCE’s.
On the decentralisation, Mr Ahwoi said there were difficult practical matters that had to be confronted in implementing L.I. 1961.
He likened the decentralisation to the struggle for independence and explained that the only difference between the two was that whilst one struggle was against white rule, the struggle in the decentralisation was that the people wanted to take power themselves.
Dr George T.K. Oduro, the Director of Institute for Educational Planning and Administration of the University of Cape Coast said the politicisation of decentralisation would not help but only make the concept a talk shop instead of promoting development for a better Ghana .