A group of aggrieved Assembly Members across the country have served notice they will take legal action against the current President of the National Association of Local Authorities of Ghana, NALAG, Felix Mensah Nii Annan-La, and the National Executive Council, if they fail to organize the 20th Biennial National Delegates Conference as soon as practicable to elect new officers.
The Convenor for the Coalition of Progressive Assembly Members, COPAM, Dr. Richard Fiadomor, has written through his lawyers to Felix Mensah Nii Annan-La, who’s also the MCE for Tema, asking him to allow the election to take place anytime soon or face them in court.
[contextly_sidebar id=”xb4oGTkfsVgbXD4n9bE2XlTzTsyCd1Ei”]Dr. Richard Fiadomor, who’s also the Assembly Member for Sakumono Electoral area, told Citi News the current NALAG President, who is acting illegally in that position after he continued and completed a former President’s tenure in March 2018, is deliberately preventing the election from taking place.
“I delivered the letter to the NALAG House around 2:00pm on Wednesday, so I met the administrator, and he stamped on both letters and then I took mine away. But I got a call from what I will call the illegal NALAG President this [Thursday] afternoon, so it gives me the indication that he has gotten it.”
“We’re embarking on this course because we think that, NALAG as an association, we have a constitution, and it is clear on how long you can hold an office. You’re supposed to hold an office for two years which is renewable. But he in his case, it was the former Mayor of Tema, Hon. Isaac Ashai Odamtten who was in office, and when the NDC lost the election, he [Felix Mensah Nii Annan-La], had to take over and serve his unfinished term. But that unfinished term expired on the 15th of March 2018, and since then, he has just deliberately refused to call conference for elections to be done; and we think that we cannot sit down for him to run the association as if it’s his private business or some monarchy that he has come to take over from, so that’s the basis for our fight” he explained.
Dr. Lamptey noted that “We started this as COPAM, and we’ve come out with several press releases, where we cautioned that by December 2018, if we don’t have our elections, we will have no option than to go to court; so that’s why we’ve begun the process to get the court to compel him to call the conference” he explained.
According to Dr. Lamptey, unconfirmed reports suggest that, the current President may be delaying the process because he is waiting for all assembly members to receive their motorbikes before the election.
“As Assembly Members, every four years or every term we are given motorbikes, but those motorbikes have delayed; and now it has started coming. So we have heard that he wants all the Assembly Members to get the motorbikes before the election is held; and we think that the motorbikes have nothing to do with the NALAG constitution; elections are not contingent on provision of motorbikes for assembly members; so for that one, we’ve heard it, but we don’t want to believe that’s the situation; just that we also find it very difficult to believe why as at now, he hasn’t been able to call conference”.
He also accused the NALAG General Secretary of being incompetent for failing to ensure that the elections are held.
“I must also be quick to say that we have a very incompetent General Secretary who is a staff of the NALAG, and he’s paid by our dues, and he’s supposed to ensure that even if there’s no President or council is dissolved, it is his duty to ensure that elections are held; but he’s also sitting there aloof, and we just don’t know what’s going on, so we think that we have to make sure the right thing is done and the constitution must be respected”.
“It would be recalled that COPAM took a serious exception to the unilateral cancellation of the 20th Biennial National Delegates Conference of NALAG which was approved by the National Executive Council (NEC) of the Association to have been held from 12th-15th December, 2018 in Sunyani, by the illegal President without recourse to NEC” a COPAM statement noted.
“This was done with a very flimsy and lame excuse that NALAG as an Association was having logistical and resource constraints”, and that the said dates scheduled for conference date coincided with some national programmes which was going to involve most of the MMDCEs and Government officials” the group said.
“Article 9(1) of the NALAG Constitution requires that National Delegates Conference “shall be held every two years not later than six months after the close of the Financial Year”. Yet with the expiry of the term of office of the current illegal President on March 15th 2018, he has deliberately refused to cause the 20th Biennial National Delegates Conference to be held up until today. And as if that is it not, the illegal President had the audacity and effrontery to unilaterally cancel the Conference after persistent pressure being brought to bear on NALAG.”
Efforts by Citi News to reach the NALAG President and the General Secretary for comments have proven futile.
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By: Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie|citinewsroom.com|Ghana
