Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, the Majority Leader in Parliament, has suggested the need for the country to re-evaluate the method of selecting ministers, in order to add value to governance and rule of law.
He explained that the current trend where persons with no technical capabilities were elected must be discontinued so as to avoid ‘difficulties’ in their appointment.
According to him, in a straight presidential system, ministers were appointed from outside Parliament, for instance, the US had a flagship presidential system, invariably, their ministers were all technical people which could be replicated in Ghana.
Speaking at the Constitution Day Public Lecture at the University of Professional Studies Accra (UPSA) on the theme: ‘Avoiding the Impending Death of the 1992 Constitution’, Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu observed that ‘the practice where ministers who are reshuffled to head different ministries do not go through a second vetting to ensure their competence for the new position is also worrying since we are not adding value to our governance but the fault is not in our stars rather the fault is in us.
“I also suggest capping the number of ministers and hasn’t the time also come for us to place in the 1992 Constitution an upper limit on the number of ministers that we have? Because cabinet ministers are the only ministers that shape policy.
“Bills and agreements that come before Parliament are predicated on policies and principles, these policies and principles are shaped by cabinet ministers, if you are not a cabinet minister you cannot, technically, sponsor a bill in Parliament,” Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu postulated.
He quizzed how come when the Constitution placed a ceiling of 19 cabinet ministers, the nation might have had, outside the regional ministers, 40 to 45 ministers and the relevance for such numbers and advocated another look at the situation. –citinewsroom.com
