GOOD SHOW (Front page), 16-04-09

Story: Graphic Reporters
ON the occasion of his 100th day in office today, President John Atta Mills has earned high marks from a number of governance experts and industry players who have hailed his stewardship in governance, the economy and security but raised issues with sanitation and the case of suspects being held without remand.
The experts include the Head of the Conflict Prevention Management and Resolution Department of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Dr Emmanuel Kwesi Aning; a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ghana, Dr Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atuah, and a waste management consultant, Captain F. B. Amoh-Twum (retd).

Security
On security, Dr Aning commended the Mills administration for taking positive steps to address the narcotics menace and lauded the appointment of ACP Robert Ayalingo as the Head of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) as most appropriate.
He said public pronouncements made by the President, the Vice-President, as well as the Minister of the Interior, on government’s abhorrence of the narcotics problem were good assurances in dealing with the situation.
Dr Aning, however, urged the government to move beyond rhetoric and provide adequate operational support for NACOB, particularly by upgrading it into an independent body with investigative and prosecutorial powers in order to make it more efficient.
He also stressed the need for the government to increase budgetary allocation for NACOB and review the country’s anti-drug legal regime.
On the Ghana Police Service, Dr Aning reiterated the need for the President to appoint a civilian as the IGP to “clean the dirt within the service”.
He said although the President promised to re-open investigations into the murder of the Ya-Na in 2002, it should not be done out of context, in view of the sensitive nature of the issue.
He said critical to the Ya-Na case were other unresolved chieftaincy disputes and the increasing spate of human trafficking that needed to be addressed, pointing out that “all these and the drug menace are underpinned by the fact that we still lack a financial intelligence unit to give teeth to our anti-money laundering law”.
Dr Aning said the greatest challenge confronting the Mills administration was how to deal with small arms and light weapons, since their circulation fuelled conflicts.
“All Ghana's conflicts are fuelled by these guns. More worrying is the provision of licences for companies to import these weapons into Ghana,” he stated.

Rule of law and human rights
On the rule of law and human rights, Dr Appiagyei-Atuah rated Prof Mills’s performance as “generally positive”.
According to him, there had not been any serious violation of the rule of law and human rights during his 100 days in office, adding that media freedom was still being accorded high respect.
He said President Mills’s commitment to expand the beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme and the establishment of the National Council on Disability, for instance, lent credence to his commitment to address human rights issues.
He, however, expressed concern over suspects who were remanded in prison for long periods without trial, describing the situation as a serious abuse of the rights of those concerned.
Dr Appiagyei-Atuah, therefore, suggested that judges be made to visit the prisons to appreciate the problem better and find a more appropriate way of dealing with the situation.
On the international front, he stressed the need for Ghana to endeavour to sign all international treaties it was yet to sign and also ratify those it had already signed to underline its commitment and responsibility to address human rights issues.

Transitional management
President Mills scored very high marks on management issues, particularly the transition process, from the script of the Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Prof Yaw Agyeman Badu, who gave the President a score of A-.
He said the score was based on the short period of transition within which the new administration had had to assume office.
He said despite the short transition period, the government assumed office with minimum disruptions and had, within its first 100 days, been able to nominate ministers of state, metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives and also constituted the Council of State and boards of state-owned institutions.
For Prof Badu, the most important point in the first 100 days was the tone set by President Mills in his public utterances.
He said once the President, in his public utterances, set the tone for a lean, frugal and efficient government, the right tone had been set for ministers and other appointees to follow.
The second most important thing that characterised the new government’s first 100 days, he said, was its indication to continue building on the democratic governance institutions and process of the past.
He said that was indicative of Ghana having reached a stage in its history where governance institutions and processes would not be destroyed but built on by successive governments.
“We will no longer reinvent the wheel but build on our existing structures to make them work,” he said.
Prof Badu also pointed at some lapses in the first 100 days of the President’s administration, such as the reported seizure of some vehicles from former government appointees and the agitation over the use of a government building by the immediate past President and described them as teething pains of a transition process which did not have the benefit of laid down structures, processes and institutions that had been tested and tried with time.
He said with time, such lapses would not be experienced when Ghanaians perfected the art of transiting from one democratically elected government to another.

Sanitation
That was an issue that had also played out significantly in the run up to the elections, with the NDC declaring that in its first 100 days in office it would take bold and comprehensive measures to deal with the appalling filth in our communities.
However, a waste management expert with Waste Recycling Ghana Limited, Capt F. B. Amoh-Twum (retd), believes that that has simply not been achieved.
He remarked that although the government might be demonstrating the political will to get rid of filth in the country, the strategy had not been effective and no new strategies or measures had been introduced to deal with the appalling filth.
Captain Amoh-Twum acknowledged, though, that the new administration had embarked on broad-based consultations to find a way out and said that was commendable.
“However, things have not been concretised and that is worrying. We need to redefine our waste management philosophy,” he emphasised.
He said the country needed to maximise economic benefits from waste, stressing that “that is key to addressing the waste management woes confronting the country”.