Chief Executive of the John A. Kufuor Foundation, Prof Baffour Agyemang-Duah says that government should stop adopting democratic systems that do not favour the country.
According to him, the electoral system has vested too much appointing power in the President.
“We shouldn’t tie ourselves to a system which is supposed to create a neutral body and yet the one who appoints members into that body is a partisan, we can assume that the president once becomes a president, becomes the father of the nation, becomes a state man but it doesn’t work for us,” he mentioned.
“At the same time, I will go to the creation of the electoral system that places the appointing authority in the President, in fact, yesterday or so ago, the former President Mahama had made an interesting point about why not amend that section and compel the president to submit nominees to parliament for approval,”
“Even then will that cure the problem? No, just as we saw yesterday in parliament,” he said.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, Prof. Agyemang-Duah mentioned that there are different systems around the world that Ghana can observe and adopt which will go a long way in improving the country rather than picking just any system that does not work for the nation.
“There are other models constituting elections around the world, we can look at various models and make a determined decision, one interesting thing about democracy that all of us tend to miss is that democratic practice is not a strait-jacket.
“The fact that it’s done in country A doesn’t mean it should be done in country B but we’re always adopting systems that do not favour us.
“In Bangladesh for instance, they don’t have a standing commission, they have a secretariat, so a year or so to elections they bring some people together to supervise the whole thing then after that the commission is dissolved, that’s a model you can look at,” Prof Agyemang-Duah stressed.
He advised the president to be very mindful of his appointing choices and procedures because the people he trusts could disappoint him.
“I think Presidents or appointing authorities should be very mindful of the optics of the actions or decisions that we make and this is a clear case.
“Even the person you’re appointing can disappoint you just like you referred to the American system where a Supreme Court judge known to be conservative will come on the panel and behave otherwise.
“The optics always raise debate in the United States whenever a president is appointing someone known to be A or B, that in itself will raise the debate and that’s what we’re experiencing here,” the Professor stated.
The CEO of the John A. Kufuor Foundation indicated that until the leaders and government revise the power relations that the constitutions has created, Ghana will continue to suffer these huge problems.
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