Minister Aspirants Ought To Step Aside

The New Publisher is of a firm opinion that Ministers who intend to contest the flag-bearer race of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) should voluntarily resign from Government or be forced to do so because it is clear their quest to become president would divide their focus and concentration in performing their duties as ministers.

It is completely ridiculous and almost provocative that in the first quarter of the first year of a four year term, petty rivalry among a group of heir presumptive who delude themselves into thinking they are heir apparent would be allowed to slow down government machinery by derailing the focus of appointees put into office with a clear mandate.

If you want to be flag-bearer, kindly go and focus on your ambition and focus your concentration on winning primaries. Don’t pretend your focus is on succeeding as a minister when in reality, half of the time, you are locked up in meeting with your campaign teams and engaging in long campaign-related phone calls.

That lack of focus, divided attention and blurred commitment would culminate in a failure in your individual mandates at the respective ministries and reputedly a failure  in the collective mandate of government as a whole.

This would not be the first time, in Ghana’s not too distant political history that appointees of an incumbent government are crabbing over each other on who succeeds the king.

Indeed it happened during the tail end of President John Kufuor’s second term in government and the then President Kufouor did the right thing by asking the persons involved to step  aside to concentrate on their ambitions so the herculean business of running a government would go on with only appointees who are fully committed and fully focused on their work.

By then, the minister aspirants included some of the biggest names in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) including the President’s own brother, Dr. Kwame Addo Kufuor who was Minister of Defence. They were all asked to and they all agreed to step aside.

Other names of ministers who had their eyes on the presidency while serving as ministers under Kufuor included the current President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who was then the Minister of Foreign Affairs, NEPAD and Regional Cooperation.

There was also Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey of blessed memory who was by then the Minister of Tourism, there was Alan Kyeremanteng who was the Minister of Trade, Industry, Private Sector Development and PSI, there was Hackman Owusu Agyeman the then Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing ,there was Professor Mike Ocquaye who was then serving as Minister of Communications, there was Felix Owusu-Adjepong the then Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Majority Leader and of course Papa Owusu Ankomah the then Minister of Education, Science and Sports.

These are big boys within the class of movers and shakers of the elephant family and if they were made to step aside, why not the current ones?