Accra, March 24, GNA - Participants at a forum have disagreed with proposals by local governance expert, Prof Kwamena Ahwoi, that 30% membership of district assemblies should be appointed by chiefs. Prof Ahwoi, a Senior Lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, proposed that the power vested in the President to appoint 30 percent membership to the Assemblies should be vested in the Regional Houses Chiefs.

Some other amendment proposals he made to the Constitutional Review Commission are the autonomy of the District Assemblies Common Fund Administrator and Members of Parliament should not be appointed as Regional Ministers.

Also, MPs should not be members of the district assemblies, District Chief Executives should not be elected and the Regional Coordinating Councils should be given separate budget lines of their own in the national budget.

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) Ghana organised the one-day forum that brought together experts from the Institute of Local Government Studies, Members of Parliament, leaders of political parties, Ministers, some representatives of the security agencies and some legal practitioners.

Prof Ahwoi presented a paper on 93Rethinking Decentralisation and Local Government in Ghana-proposals for amendments." He said when power is vested in the chiefs to appoint 30 percent membership to the assemblies it would avoid a situation where a President could dismiss government appointees who are likely to vote against the DCE nominee.

Some of the participants argued against Prof. Ahwoi's proposal which, according to them, would bring conflict in the Regional Houses of Chiefs because the chiefs might want to serve their interest in the appointments.

They said the decentralisation meant grassroots participation in governance and that if the power was vested in the Regional Houses of Chiefs it would mean giving their power to chiefs, a situation which is likely to bring chieftaincy conflicts with the appointments.

Some of the participants said the Constitution barred chiefs from active politics and that vesting them with powers to appoint persons might be disastrous because they might appoint only persons who could ascend to thrones and skins and defeat the district assembly concept. Participants, however, were of the view that the District Chief Executive (DCE) should be elected, a position, which Prof. Ahwoi is strongly against.

While the participants argued that the DCE would be more accountable to the people and could facilitate development when elected, Prof. Ahwoi said that practice could introduce DCEs from the opposition who would work against the government and the clock of development would be reversed.

Prof. Ahwoi proposed that the DCE should be nominated by the President, interviewed by the Public Service Commission for competence and voted for by the Assembly Members.

Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development who chaired the function, said there was the need to review the portion in the Constitution that spells out the population of an area before that area could qualify to be a District, Municipal or a Metropolis.

He said a number of districts have been created when in actual fact they were not qualified and that the situation was making it difficult to develop such districts since revenue base of those places could not help to embark on any meaningful development. Prof. Justice A.K.P. Kludze, a visiting Senior Fellow of IEA, said long before the Constitutional Review, IEA had been drawing attention to the slow pace at which decentralisation was being implemented in the country.

Dr Christian Amoako-Nuamah, an adviser in the Office of the President, expressed concern about the way politics had divided the country and called on all to live above political interest and think about the development of the country.

"There is a deepening partisanship, which is destroying our country. All of us must condemn it if we really want this nation to develop. NDC is doing it. NPP is doing it. So are the CPP, PNC and all the parties but we should think of Ghana first", she said.