Keep NPP, NDC out of MMDCE elections - Prof Kwasi Prempeh warns government

Chairman of the Constitution Review Committee, Professor Kwasi Prempeh, has questioned the government's proposals to elect Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) on partisan lines, warning that such a move could shift attention away from its core local development priorities.

Speaking on JoyNews monitored by GhanaWeb on August 4, 2026, Prof Prempeh explained that the Constitution Review Committee deliberately recommended that MMDCE elections be conducted on a non-partisan basis to preserve the focus on community development rather than national political rivalry.

According to him, introducing political parties into local government elections would effectively create a third nationwide partisan election, with campaigns likely to be dominated by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), instead of addressing the pressing needs of local communities.

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"We proposed no party. And the justification was simple. We have enough party elections. We wanted the local district elections to be about local issues only.

"The logic was that if you make local government elections party-based, all local issues would disappear, and we would nationalise the elections. So we will have three elections: MPs, presidents, and MMDCEs, all nationalised. Which means all the issues that are going to dominate those elections are going to be NPP, NDC, and political party fights, not about the concerns of the locality," he said.

Prof Prempeh additionally noted that the committee envisioned local elections as an opportunity for communities to focus on issues directly affecting them, including sanitation, public service delivery, and local development, without the influence of partisan politics.

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He argued that keeping district-level elections non-partisan would ensure that residents elect leaders based on their ability to solve local problems rather than their political affiliations.

"So that's where we veered in the direction of no party. At least there might be one election in our calendar that forces communities to focus on their problems and their local solutions, public service delivery, sanitation, and those things, and not let the parties come in and hijack it and turn it into a polarised national election," he stated.

JHM/AM

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