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GIVE PRESIDENT A 7-YEAR TERM – PROF ADEI
MONDAY, 4TH JULY, 2005 -- Professor Stephen Adei, director-general of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administrtion, has proposed a seven-year term presidency for Ghana.
He explained that a seven-year term for a president could save the country the cost and disruption entailed in installing a new government every four years under the current system.
Prof. Adei, who is also the president of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Ghana, was speaking at the 16th national marketing performance awards night in Accra at the week-end.
He added: “Most importantly, it may allow for a strategic longer frame for the management of the economy. Currently, the opposition and government start strategising for the next election as soon as an election is over, with counter moves.”
He also suggested that provision be made for two vice-presidents, adding that “fortunately, the cost of a second vice-president is less than that of two ministers and we can be economical in future by reducing the number of our ministers and deputies to make up for that, with even a saving to the economy. The vice-presidents may also hold substantive ministerial portfolios.”
Prof. Adei was of the opinion that Ghanaians are behaving like ostriches. “As soon as running mates are being considered, if the presidential candidates are Akans, the chorus is for a northern running mate and vice-versa. What about the other groups?”
He said that since democracy has its failings, there is the tendency that other significant minorities might feel alienated and marginalised, and so efforts should be made to address that phenomenon. “We cannot be locked into a situation of an Akan president and Northern vice-president or vice-versa in perpetuity with its social implications of a sense of exclusion of others,” he pointed out.
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