Mr. Stephen Ashitey Adjei
Government has been urged to set up a monitoring team to check the situation where some assembly members allegedly use the opportunity to endorse their metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) to extort money.
Stephen Ashitey Adjei, a political activist, said in a statement issued in Accra that such practices often lead to unbridled corruption.
Hence there was the need for government and various security agencies to deploy undercover agents to investigate, arrest and prosecute these perpetrators.
It said the recent nomination of 212 MMDCEs was mostly greeted with unrests, with some ruling New Patriotic Party supporters protesting.
“However, the loud protestation from party supporters over some of the nomination is not the only act of indiscipline that fraught this aspect of Ghana’s democracy.
Something worse than opposing the President’s choice of local administrative heads would be bribery, which could also at play come the endorsement.”
“As the nominees get ready to face confirmation votes at the various assemblies around the country, they know that they must be prepared to pay various sums of money to assembly members to ensure that their nominations are not rejected.
This is why at the assembly level, this time of the democracy calendar is called the “Cocoa Season,” the statement said.
It said the practice was bad as it contravened PNDC Law 284, it noted.
The statement said: “Both the giver and taker of bribes are guilty of bribery.”
It therefore called on the government to initiate the bribery proof system to elect MMDCEs.
GNA
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