Emmanuel Mark Ackon
The Shama District Assembly in the Western Region has eventually elected a Presiding Member (PM) after five failed attempts to do so. This however comes at the back of serious lobbying and interventions by opinion and traditional leaders in the district.
Emmanuel Mark Ackon, the NPP constituency secretary and Assembly Member for Bentsir Electoral Area, was elected the PM in a second round balloting on Wednesday June 17.
He polled 25 out of the 26 votes cast, with one rejected.
In the first round balloting, Mr Ackon had 13 votes, with his contender, Emmanuel Amevor, also securing 12. However, some traditional rulers present intervened by convincing Mr Amevor to step down in the interest and development of the district.
Failed attempts
Attempts by the Assembly to elect a new PM, after the tenure of Percy Ahenakwah had expired in November last year, proved futile on countless occasions, with a number of reasons being assigned to it.
One of such reasons is said to be failure by Dr Atio Panford, the Member of Parliament, to extend his monetary gifts to perceived NDC members in the House.
There were also rumours of an entrenched position taken by the NDC group to retaliate failure by their counterparts in the NPP to endorse the candidature of one Bolu as PM during the erstwhile Mahama administration.
Common interest
But in a brief post voting remarks, Joseph Amoah, the District Chief Executive, said it was about time members forgot about their selfish and parochial interest and rather concentrate on their core mandate of developing the district.
Mr Amoah identified disunity and partisanship among members as a major challenge facing the Assembly, and urged the members to eschew such tendencies to move Shama forward.
Later in an interview with journalists, the PM-elect bemoaned huge sums of monies spent by the Assembly on numerous elections of such nature.
To help avoid such unnecessary expenditure, Mr Ackon said it would be prudent on the part of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to review Act 936 by pegging the required PM votes to simple majority instead of two-thirds of all members of the Assembly.
