{"id":15360,"date":"2019-11-20T11:05:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T11:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=15360"},"modified":"2019-11-20T11:05:06","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T11:05:06","slug":"referendum-is-waste-of-resources-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2019\/11\/20\/referendum-is-waste-of-resources-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"Referendum is waste of resources \u2014 JOY"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The two-time Independent Presidential Candidate in the 2012 and 2016 elections, Mr Jacob Osei Yeboah (JOY), has described the December 17 referendum as a “waste” of the nation’s resources.<\/h2>\n

“There is no justification to support the December 17 referendum. It is unnecessary and a waste of taxpayers\u2019 money,” he stated.<\/p>\n

He has, therefore, called on Ghanaians to vote \u2018No\u2019 in the upcoming referendum to ensure that the local government system remained non-partisan.<\/p>\n

He was speaking at the second Emotional Intelligence Summit at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) on the -\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00adtheme: \u201cBuilding national character – The role of emotional intelligence\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is extremely important and legally instructive for Ghanaians to note that the referendum question — \u201cAre you in favour of the bill to amend Clause 3 of Article 55 of the 1992 Constitution to allow political parties to sponsor candidates for election to district assemblies or lower local government units?\u201d does not connote the election of MMDCEs that Ghanaians desire so much. So the referendum question is dishonest or fraudulent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/ins><\/p>\n

MMDCEs election<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr Yeboah said most Ghanaians wanted their Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) to be elected, rather than by the partisan appointment of the President as stipulated in Article 243 (1) of the 1992 Constitution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can achieve this objective by amending Article 243(1) which is not entrenched. This means Parliament can amend without any costly referendum that will cause us to borrow from foreigners.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Parliament does the amendment, it reinforces the letter and spirit of the 1992 Constitution to protect the governance at the district level from partisan polarisation, winner-takes-all, vigilantism, cronyism, corruption and lawlessness as we\u2019ve all witnessed for the past 27 years in the 4th Republic,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n

Mr Yeboah pointed out that Parliament had almost completed all due processes to amend Article 243 (1), hence there was \u201cno need for a referendum on 17th December, 2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

Party sponsorship<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the issue of political parties directly sponsoring MMDCEs and assembly members, he said the thought was flawed considering the dangers of partisan politics at the national level.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut why should Ghanaians vote \u2018Yes\u2019 to amend Article 55(3) to destroy the peace and stability our democratic experiment has achieved within the sub-region and on the African continent? Because at the national level where we have political parties election, we have witnessed brute wickedness of vigilantism, unrepentant proud thievery, lawlessness, killings, cronyism and dysfunctional democracy which are destroying our national core values and moral fibre,\u201d he pointed out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The two-time Independent Presidential Candidate in the 2012 and 2016 elections, Mr Jacob Osei Yeboah (JOY), has described the December 17 referendum as a “waste” of the nation’s resources. “There is no justification to support the December 17 referendum. It is unnecessary and a waste of taxpayers\u2019 money,” he stated. He has, therefore, called on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43,1],"tags":[9609,4899,11746,11941,1384,11606,913,911,11844,192,12502,7300,2264,6904,4363,4317,2898,5612,4318,1198,5396,5424,3805,11377,7400,6348,7832,3954],"class_list":["post-15360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-1992-constitution","tag-african","tag-appointment","tag-bill","tag-corruption","tag-democracy","tag-democratic","tag-election","tag-foreigners","tag-ghana","tag-ghanaians","tag-gimpa","tag-government","tag-jacob-osei-yeboah","tag-jacob-osei-yeboah-joy","tag-metropolitan","tag-mmdces","tag-money","tag-municipal-and-district-chief-executives-mmdces","tag-parliament","tag-peace","tag-politics","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-referendum","tag-us","tag-waste-of-resources","tag-will"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}