Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of state institutions must be restrained from contesting siting Members of Parliament (MPs) of New Patriotic Party (NPP) to avoid the repeat of abysmal performance of the party in the 2020 parliamentary elections.
Restraining them from contesting should be part of measures not to take sides in the race to elect a flag bearer to achieve the unprecedented three consecutive victories for the party under the Fourth Republic.
Yusif Adams, Asante-Akim South Communication Officer, advised in an open letter to the National Executives of NPP and applauded them for cautioning against open declaration for flag bearer hopefuls.
While applauding the leadership of the party for cautioning the executives, he believed more needed to be done in an attempt to ensure siting MPs got full concentration to serve their constituents without distractions in order to avoid the situation where some key officers in the party were tactically banned from contesting in the last parliamentary primaries.
“Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives, secretaries and chairpersons were asked to quit their positions two clear years if they have interest in contesting in the parliamentary primaries, that decision by the leadership of the party prevented them from sabotaging MPs and rather focused on their mandates as expected.
“A similar directive should have been extended to the CEOs whose activities adversely affected the 2020 campaign of the party as most of them never used their positions to help grassroots of the party, denying them job opportunities and there has been several complaints and allegations to the effect that most CEOs sell job opportunities to the highest bidders and deny members, supporters and sympathisers of the party,” Mr Adams pointed out.
According to him, in the 2020 parliamentary primaries of the party, some CEOs succeeded in ousting incumbent MPs who had committed and dedicated their time and resources to build their constituencies despite doing virtually nothing to support and assist in mobilisation of party’s base and the CEOs wrestled the seat from MPs on the back of lies and propaganda.
Mr Adams contended that “if indeed we are serious to break the eight, we must extend restriction to CEOs against contesting our next parliamentary primaries as has been done to Metropolitan Municipal and District Chief Executives and other members of the Executive”.
