You cannot shout family and friends when competence reigns supreme

Elections in our part of the world are characterized by sloganeering in all its forms and facets.

Manifesto pledges, socio-economic issues and other happenings in the country become paramount for opposition parties and the party in government alike as they become the pivot around which campaigns are engineered.

The 2016 general elections, including those before that, were not without slogans and juicy speeches and mouthwatering promises from the participating parties.

Over the years, a new phraseology has become part of the electoral system and parties waste no time in making a mincemeat of the ruling class. Family and friends was one tag that plagued the then governing National Democratic Congress.

It is important to establish the fact that the terminology Family and friends emanated from the stables of the NDC which was in government.

It would be recalled that Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin was the person who coined this phrase. It was in reference to the likes of Randy Abbey and other close pals of Mahama who had restricted him from seeing the then President John Dramani Mahama. That gave us the family and friends terminology.

The opposition National Democratic Congress, through the party’s Communications Officer, in a press conference held on Tuesday, 5th November 2019, itemized names of people he termed as being family and friends of the appointing authority.

Names mentioned included Ken Ofori-Atta, Yofi Grant, Atta Akyea, Keli Gadzekpo, Ernest Addison, amongst others were mentioned as people who got their positions by virtue of their association with the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Conspicuously missing from the issues discussed was whether the 51-man appointees of the President accused of being his close allies indeed quality or not.

It is not in doubt that all those mentioned have the competence, wherewithal, and determination to handle the portfolios in which they were appointed.

The same cannot be said about the people Alban Bagbin referred to under the Mahama government.

Competence overrides all other considerations when people are being appointed to man certain establishments. The people mentioned in the NDC’s press conference, it is an irrevocable fact, have the competence to work under the Akufo-Addo Administration.