ALLOW CHIEFS TO CONTEST AS INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES (PAGE 15, NOV 6)

THE Paramount Chief of the Gwollu Traditional Area in the Upper West Region, Kuoro Buktie Limman IV, has called on the government to ensure that chiefs contest elections as independent candidates.
He was of the view that chiefs standing as independent candidates had no correlation with partisan political activities.
“The chief is the father of the nation and the people and the chieftaincy institution is not partisan,” he added.
Kuoro Limaan made the call in Wa during a regional consultative forum for the acceleration of decentralisation in Ghana.
Article 276 (1) of the Constitution says,states that “A chief shall not take part in active party politics; and any chief wishing to do so and seeking election to Parliament shall abdicate his stool or skin.”
The Gwollu chief called for the amendment of Article 276 (1), since it infringed upon the fundamental human rights of chiefs.
“We have lawyers, accountants, engineers, among others, and so why leave us out of the system?” he asked.
He also called for the involvement of chiefs in the decentralisation process, particularly in the disbursement of the District Assemblies Common Fund at the local level.
Addressing the forum, the Upper West Regional Minister, Mr Mahmud Khalid, said the current decentralisation system was a good concept and that its advantages were numerous, as it promoted grass-root participation and speedy and meaningful development.
He said the concept had quite a good legal framework for decentralisation but there were clear challenges which militated against the realisation of the full benefits of the process.
He said it was in the light of this that a series of forums were being organised nation-wide to collate views on how the process could be accelerated.
Mr Khalid said in seeking to do that, “we are hoping that we can engender views and opinions on various aspects of the issues at stake”.
“We, therefore, seek at this forum any views and ideas that will strengthen and deepen the practice of decentralisation,” he stated
In a brief remark, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Joseph Yieleh Chireh, said many identifiable bodies were being consulted on the decentralisation process across the country.
He said the issue at stake was not a partisan one and that all relevant agencies would be involved in the process.