KMA poll brawl: Reg. Min. steps in

Ashanti Regional Minister John Alexander Ackon has said he will intervene to find an amicable solution to the several failed attempts by assembly members of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) to elect a presiding member.

His intervention follows a free-for-all brawl at the Assembly on Tuesday May 17 during the fourth failed attempt to elect a presiding member.

The Assembly has been split as supporters of both candidates: Nana Kofi Senya and Adumhene Baffuor Agyei Kese IV, have taken entrenched positions to ensure their preferred candidate is elected.

Speaking to Class News, the Regional Minister said he will study the root cause of the impasse and deal with it accordingly.

“If you want to go into a contest or any conflict management, you should know the underlying causes of that development after which you need to know the various players belonging to the various factions, who hold influence, to come to the table with what is informing their decision and then you have to fashion out those who can help you to chart a course of resolution, but even that it is important for everybody to know that when it comes to intervening, people should soften stance and not determine the direction of intervention, so it is a process and that is what we are going to do,” Mr Ackon said.

However, local government analyst George Kyei Baffour has blamed the incident on partisan politics. According to him, it is high time politicians stayed away from the assembly election and appointment process.

“The constitution in article 248 says that assembly elections are not partisan, so, if you are recommending people to the president for appointment into a non-partisan institution and then you nominate regional secretaries of political parties, special assistants to Chief Executives as government appointees to assemblies, clearly you sound the alarm bell that partisanship is directly being introduced, then it allows the other party to also sit up; that is the cause of the problem. So, if the Minister wants to resolve it, definitely he has to go deeper into the issues to do a critique of it and then come to terms with the reality that the assembly is divided between NDC and NPP”, Mr Baffour said.