Mr. Nduom wants local executives elected by the people of the local area rather than the current process of having 3 of 5 vetted nominees of the president run for the office. As it is said, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” We have unitary system of government, not a federal system of government. We hold one person responsible for all that is wrong with the country and it is working.

In recent weeks, Ms. Ama Benyiwa Doe has come out and said that she has been declared dead because she has not been in the media. She said that she had been given another job and told to keep out of the media. A previously uncontrolled mouth has been reined in because she had to answer to someone. If she had been independently elected and thus answered only to the voters, she would still be wreaking havoc.

Canada still has an uncontrolled crack-head who thinks he can clown his way to re-election and no one can do anything about it. Smoking crack is against the law. We can’t have law enforcers who break the law in our government. (We may have some who we don’t know about, but we know of this one; he has admitted that he did smoke crack and there are videos of it.) If Mayor Ford had to answer to someone, he would be fired by now instead, he is forging on. Do we want that in Ghana where we don’t yet have our laws sorted out let alone its enforcement?

Detroit is currently sorting out this very issue. The governor of a unitary State government of Michigan stepped in to appoint a financial manager to manage the city’s financial affairs to the objection of the local elected officials. Strictly, this is how unitary government works. The power of the local government is the power that the head of the unitary government allows the local government to have.

Even in Detroit, the voters are learning for the first time how unitary government works even though many didn’t know they had a unitary government. How would anyone explain this to voters in Ghana if we had a similar situation and they thought that the President was overstepping especially if there is an irresponsible politician who wanted to take advantage of it and cause trouble or if there is a mutiny simply because people believed that the President was overstepping? I can see Kumasi turning on President Mahama if they thought he was overstepping whether they were right or wrong.

Most Ghanaians who have PhDs are all knowledge endowed and are second to none. This seems to get in the way sometimes in some of the things we need to do. I sort of believe that this probably was part of the problems between Kwame Nkrumah and Dr. Busia and maybe the others. If we go the route that Mr. Nduom is advocating, we could have a PhD elected a Mayor who thinks that he is much more knowledgeable of government than the elected president who may not have a PhD, and he may frustrate the efforts of the president to the extent that nothing gets done in his local area, and he may turn around and blame the president for it.

Some may argue that in a situation like above, the voters may vote out one of them. People of a local area may not vote for the president but others in other areas may vote and keep the president. As to a mayor being voted out, how many people in Ghana understand politics? How many people in the villages even have a television or access to news papers to even keep up with the news to know what is going on in government? Some of their votes are more apt to be bought with the occasional “white man die” that comes their way at election time than a mayor’s feud with the president would influence their votes.

We are still sorting out our politics. Let’s not complicate it until we know where we are going. Dr. Nduom had his say. Here is mine. Let the conversation continue. Through it we may get to a perfect solution for Ghana.

Tony Pobee-Mensah