{"id":252868,"date":"2016-09-28T11:34:34","date_gmt":"2016-09-28T11:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=252868"},"modified":"2016-09-28T11:34:34","modified_gmt":"2016-09-28T11:34:34","slug":"assemblies-must-go-partisan-local-governance-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/09\/assemblies-must-go-partisan-local-governance-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"Assembly system outmoded; MMDCEs must be elected – Kyei Baffour"},"content":{"rendered":"
On the back of the fracas over the election of a Presiding Member for the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), a Local Governance analyst, George Kyei Baffour, believes the way forward for the Assemblies is to embrace their underlying partisanship.<\/p>\n
Mr. Kyei Baffour, a former presiding member himself, asserted that, \u201cat this stage, we will not be able to right the wrongs in respect to the current constitutional and legal arrangements, looking at the acrimonious nature of the political terrain so the best thing to do is to go partisan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Kyei Baffour \u00a0rubbished claims that, Ghaanaians\u00a0could not be trusted to\u00a0elect qualified persons at the Assembly level, as he argued that \u201cGhanaians have the mental orientation to elect their president and their members of parliament so they should be able to elect their Mayors [Metropolitan Chief Executives].\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s scrap the government appointee 30 percent thing. We should do away with it because it is archaic, it is outmoded, it is of no use…\u00a0Let\u2019s allow parties to nominate their candidates to contest on their tickets for the DCE and the Assembly members, so the people will have their mandate to elect their own leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
The KMA’s troubles<\/strong><\/p>\n The KMA\u2019s attempts to elect a Presiding Member since November 2015, \u00a0have failed, and\u00a0\u00a0Mr. Kyei Baffour opined that, the Assembly’s problems are not \u201cbeing resolved because it is deeply rooted in partisan entrenched positions.\u201d<\/p>\n The latest sitting of elections yesterday [Tuesday], even saw some fisticuffs as an Assembly Member\u00a0traded blows<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>with a\u00a0National Democratic Congress (NDC) serial caller, during the proceedings.<\/p>\n