Editorial: Appointments C'ttee - Living up to expectations

Last Friday, a presidential nominee to a deputy ministerial position, failed to sail through after failing the citizenship criterion for assuming ministerial positions.

What that brought to mind was the question of the level of due diligence that goes into the appointment of not only ministers of state, but other public office holders as well.

In our editorial of Friday, June 2, 2006 titled SERIOUS SEARCH, VETTING, NEEDED TO MAXIMISE RETURNS, on the on-going vetting that has come in the wake of the recent reshuffle, we had raised issue with the kind of due diligence or the lack of it in the appointment process.

The Chronicle believes that if any serious due diligence had been done on the nominee who could not make it through the Appointments Committee, it would not have come to that.

It was not surprising that Mr. Lawrence Akwasi Prempeh?s Achilles heel, his dual nationality, came up considering the rift in the Oforikrom Constituency of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that he chairs.

That makes it possible that there may be some persons holding public offices for which they may not be qualified but for the fact that they have not antagonized anybody, which in our part of the world is the key motivation for people to disclose adverse information about others.

The situation where persons riddled with controversies, manage to catch the eye of the executive, leading to appointments that are at times sustained in the face of all kinds of scandals, has often affected the harmony and cooperation needed for development. Such appointments lead to a waste of everybody?s time.

It was again not surprising that it was a minority member of the Committee who filed the critical question that saw the dream of an aspiring deputy regional minister. As we stated last Friday, members of the governing party seem to have a difficulty doing a critical examination of decisions referred to parliament from the executive.

It is our belief that members of the Majority in Parliament owe it as a duty to ensure that the parliament in which they command an absolute majority leaves behind a legacy that they would be proud of.

It is our expectation that at least for those of them not doubling as members of the executive would strive to let that happen so it would not be said that they acquiesced or supported certain decisions that ended up embarrassing a whole nation.

The Chronicle repeats its advocacy for a more thorough search to enable Ghana get a few ?good? men to handle its affairs.