MDs can’t join campaign trail – Kwabena Agyapong

A presidential aspirant of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Kwabena Ahyei Agyepong has asked President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to ask all heads and managing directors of state agencies such as the National Lottery Authority (NLA), the State Transport Corporation (STC) not to openly join the campaign trail to elect a flagbearer for the NPP for the 2024 general elections.

Mr Agyepong said that although the heads of these institutions are political appointments, they ought to be guided by corporate governance practices because they are state institutions.

Speaking in an interview with TV3 on Thursday, August 3, he said “When you have a lot of presidential appointees, not ministers, ministers are political so they can do what they want to do, but public officers like the Managing Director of Bui Dam, or like the Managing Director of State Transport Corporation or the Director General of the Ghana Lottery, State Housing Corporation, these are public officers who should be guided by the rules of corporate governance, you are put in place and you work for Ghana.

“It is a political appointment, we accept that and you can support people quietly but outwardly leaving your job and joining the campaign trail, I think it is unacceptable.

“For me, it goes against governance procedures and I think if you are a political appointee, what the president could have done was to have asked the Chief of Staff to rein them in.”

Meanwhile, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has told the NPP that he would vote for a flagbearer aspirant who he believes can defeat the candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) John Dramani Mahama.

Mr Akufo-Addo said again that he prefers to vote for an aspirant who can also unite the party.

“I have just one vote, the same as any polling station executive anywhere in the country, and I will cast that vote for an aspirant who, I believe, can best unite the Party, and, above all, who can win the presidential election of 7th December 2024, and inflict a third successive defeat on the perennial NDC Presidential Candidate, John Dramani Mahama,” he said when he met with communicators of the New Patriotic Party, who called on him at Jubilee House, the seat of the nation’s presidency, on Wednesday, 2nd August 2023.

The NPP will be going for its special delegates conference on Saturday, August 26 to reduce the number of flagbearer aspirants from 10 to 5.

Source: 3news.com