Former President Agyekum Kufuor has stated that one of the issues that he disliked about the constitutional provisions for what a head of state can do or not was to pick 50 per cent of his appointees from Parliament.
“As a product of a political party, even for a president, it is not so easy to take unilateral decisions that do not align with the general direction of the larger party and being president means that a person works mostly in the interest of his political party, ensuring that its ideals are fully represented in government,” he asserted.
According to the former president, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) produced him in a sense, and it so happened that he grew up with colleagues, some even smarter than him, and shared some values, norms and tenets of the party.
Former President Kufuor, who stated this at an Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) interaction with him at his residence in Peduase in the Eastern Region on reviewing the 1992 Constitution, indicated that an issue he disliked was about how he was expected to make political appointments.
He explained that the leadership, members, well wishers and faithful of the NPP worked together to get the party’s nomination implemented for the country to know they advocated the party grew and became the party of the nation and not just him.
“So, if Kufuor gets the chance and says now I am here, I have a free hand, and I will bring people from outside because all the people I have worked with over the decades are not good enough to help me, then I will say I changed the party, if I had my way, I would have wanted the express implementation of the separation of powers, ensuring majority of appointments are not made from Parliament, as the 1992 Constitution has stipulated.
“But then, since they put me in the driver’s seat, once you are there, you are there for the entire nation, naturally, I want some leeway to bring one or two people to make the citizenry feel after all, this government is there for us, but the stock really was the party’s government,” former President Kufuor averred.
He insisted that what he did not like though was the constitutional provision that 50 per cent must come from Parliament because he would go for strict separation of powers and that is “if people are Members of Parliament (MPs), they remain as such and if they are given chance to become ministers, then they have to leave Parliament”.
