Juaso (Ash), Aug. 01, GNA – Chief Executive Officers of State institutions must be restrained from contesting siting Members of Parliament (MPs) of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Yusif Adams, Asante-Akim South Communication officer, has suggested.
In an open letter to the National Executives of the party that was copied to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Mr Adams pointed out that restraining the CEOs from contesting, should be part of measures to avoid the repeat of abysmal performance of the party in the 2020 parliamentary elections.
While applauding the leadership of the party for cautioning the executives not to take sides in the race to elect a flag bearer, he believed more needed to be done to achieve the unprecedented three consecutive victories for the party under the Fourth Republic.
“In our attempt to ensure that our MPs get full concentration to serve their constituents without distractions, some key officers in the party were tactically banned from contesting in our last parliamentary primaries.
Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs), secretaries and chairpersons were asked to quit their positions two clear years if they have interest in contesting in the parliamentary primaries,” part of the letter read.
That decision by the leadership of the party, he noted, went a long way to prevent the MMDCEs from sabotaging the MPs but rather focused on their mandates as expected.
He believed a similar directive should have been extended to the CEOs whose activities adversely affected the 2020 campaign of the party as most of the CEOs never used their positions to help the party grassroots, denying them job opportunities.
“There has been several complaints and allegations to the effect that most of these CEOs sell job opportunities to the highest bidders and deny party people.
“Their focus has always been to make more money to get the financial strength to contest parliamentary primaries,” he alleged.
He said in the 2020 parliamentary primaries of the party, some CEOs succeeded in ousting incumbent MPs who had committed their time and resources to build their constituencies.
Despite doing virtually nothing to support the mobilisation of the party’s support base, these CEO wrestled the seat from the MPs on the back of lies and propaganda, he noted.
“I wish to draw the attention of the General Secretary and the rest of the National Executives that if indeed we are serious to break the eight, we must extend the restriction to the CEOs against contesting in our next parliamentary primaries as has been done to the MMDCEs and other executive members,” he concluded.
GNA