Ada Foah (Greater Accra), 7th May ?99

The clash between the Dangme East District Chief Executive(DCE) and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ada took a new turn today as about 4,000 supporters of the MP besieged the offices of the DCE demanding his removal from office.

The demonstrators, who came in a long convoy of mummy trucks and canoes from the rural areas, were joined by Ada National Democratic Congress (NDC) constituency executives who occupied the offices of the Dangme East District Assembly for about two hours.

The demonstration was in retaliation of a similar one held on Wednesday by about 40 supporters of Mr Justice Kwame Caesar, the DCE, against NDC constituency executives and Mr Amos Buertey, the MP, for planning to remove the DCE from office.

The MP's faction, infuriated by Wednesday's action, mobilised in their numbers and carried placards accusing the DCE and Mr Kwamena Ahwoi, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development of corruption.

Some of the placards read: "the DCE must be probed" and "Kwamena Ahwoi is corrupt", in reference to an allegation that the minister gave the nod to the DCE to renovate a four-bedroom guesthouse at a cost of 365 million cedis.

A detachment of the police was sent to the assembly to forestall any nasty incidents. Two supporters of the DCE, Mr Francis Dugbartey and Mr Ernest Otu, however, sustained head injuries and were treated and discharged at the Ada health centre.

The differences between the DCE and the deputy minister is believed to have started when the DCE allegedly declared his intention to contest as MP in the 2000 elections.

Mr Buertey, who is also the deputy Greater Accra regional minister, the source stated, also intends to stand for the same position for the third time.

On Wednesday, Mr Buertey denied that he and the executives were behind a meeting held at Kunyenya on Thursday, April 29, where the decision to forcibly remove the DCE from office was taken.

The demonstrators later presented to Mr S.S. Odokow, Presiding Member of the assembly, a resolution in which they accused the DCE of spending over 800 million cedis on a guest house and a court building when the villages have no drinking water.

They also accused him of ignoring their application for loans from the Poverty Alleviation fund and of what they termed "unreasonably high cost of projects in the district".

These include 44 million cedis spent on two dug-outs at Sege within two-and-a-half days, 66.7 million cedis on the Lenobrinya Gardens and 118 million cedis on the Afidenyigba dam.

The resolution said certain community-initiated projects like the Toflokpo Junior Secondary School had been left unattended to.

It also alleged that some donations meant for specific developments, like one by the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) for the development of towns and villages around the Songor lagoon, could not be accounted for. The resolution called for the removal of representative of the salt development task force with immediate effect.

It also called on the government to hasten the process of development of social amenities in the district and speed up the process of implementation of the master plan on the Songor Lagoon before the year 2000.

In another development, two NDC officials from the Greater Accra Regional Secretariat were at Ada on Thursday to find out the causes of the disturbances in the town over the past two days.