NEW APPOINTEES MUST NOT FAIL GHANA AND THE PRESIDENT

As the 2020 Election Petition hearing goes on, the President, committed to proving his worth as a leading statesman in Ghana and Africa, for that matter, doggedly picks his lean, dream team as a critical exercise aimed at supporting his vision and mission to remain credible in the estimation of the over 6,000,000 Ghanaians who endorsed him as President.

It is no longer a secret, as the names roll out, that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is committed to maintaining that vision, to drastically reduce the numbers.

Having accomplished his first leg of a mission that proved successful, in the estimation of majority of Ghanaians, including NDC members who ignored John Mahama and ceded their votes to the incumbent President, the next hurdle is to “cut off the head of the snake”, as our elders would say.

Challenging term

As most decent-minded Ghanaians would therefore expect, such a lean team should be able to live up to the task of filling in for the deficit in initial numbers to sustain the tempo of delivery in an election term that has intriguing challenges as our history has revealed.

With Mahama still desperate to be relevant, despite the marooning by his own sympathisers and members at the 2020 polls, the duty on the part of these appointees remains equally crucial in the light of the relatively poor showing on the part of the NPP’s 2020 parliamentary candidates.

In that regard, the NPP and, for that matter, the government need not look far in analysing which sectors of the national economy performed to expectation, and which under-performed or woefully failed us as a nation. All these, we believe, will factor into the decision to pick that noble team.

Lessons

If there was one lesson which the elections offered, it was that the electorate – right or wrong – know where arrogance popped up and where flagrant acts of prodigality caused the governing party some pain. But that of course is where the efficiency or otherwise of the government’s political research units come in, and also whether intelligence information was made available and that somebody who should have acted failed to do so.

That is exactly why the President’s current crop of appointees must put personal interests behind and consider national interests supreme.

Particularly at the level of local government, for instance, we must admit that the large majority of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) failed the government as much as the MPs in some of the constituencies simply failed to connect with the ground.

Stabilising the grounds

That is aside of the fact that the governing party has still not been able to decisively contain the mercenary excesses of constituency executives who abandon their responsibilities and head for where they think they can find cash.

While the new appointees may not be able do the work of constituency executives for them, it becomes critical, in re-igniting the processes for winning the 2024 elections, through a competent management of national resources and development of initiatives, to jell with the grounds in improving lives and livelihoods.

The appointee who ignores this basic ingredient in politics gives cause for concern and, must not only take blame in the unlikely event of defeat but also face some party sanctioning.

Appeal

That is why we at the Daily Statesman would urge the new appointees to do a fair introspection of their abilities and capacities as swell as their appetites before committing themselves to be part of the lean team.

The NPP must move forward; but it will depend on the level of commitment that the party’s big boys and girls are willing to make in attaining the vision of constitutionally handing over to itself.