A former United Nations (UN) Senior Governance Advisor, Professor Baffour Agyemang-Duah, says the Council of State is a useless creature that has absolutely no relevance to the country’s development and must be thrown away like a piece of rag.
He adds that the Council of State has been created by the constitution for the elite in the society to exploit – bleed dry the country and that it simply does not make sense to assemble 30 people, pay them huge amounts of money and monstrous lump sum after serving out a term of four years.
You assemble 30 people, pay them huge sums of money and all that they are supposed to do is to review certain things and to make recommendations to the President, which are not binding though.
“Recommendations in the form of advice by the Council of State can be taken or not taken by the President.
The President appoints some people, and he goes to the Council of State and they say yes, go ahead. Come to think of it, over the past 30 years, how many appointees by any President that the Council of State has had the balls to tell the President, this guy has a bad record, don’t appoint him.”
Prof Baffour Agyemang-Duah said since the Council of State is always predictable – everybody can predict how they will do things, why should the country be spending so much on them.
This comes amid the intense public discussions generated by the decision of the Agbogbomefia of Asogli State, Togbe Afede XIV, to reject an ex-gratia payment of Ghs365,000.00 after serving out his four-year term on the Council of State.
Ex-gratia payment to Article 71 Office-holders is something that many see as unfair to the ordinary public servants, who after serving for 30 or more years, at the end of the month are paid the paltry amount of Ghs1,000 or far less as SSNIT pension.
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