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The Dean of Graduate Studies of the Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS), Mr Eric Oduro Osae, has advised the District Chief Executive (DCE) for Twifo-Atti-Morkwa, Mr Bossman Osei-Hyiamang Jnr, to resign his position on moral and social grounds. That, he said, was important because his current status as an �ex-convict� would make it difficult for him to exercise his authority as the DCE by way of issuing instructions to his subordinates, as well as relate with people in the communities. Speaking to the Daily Graphic on the implications of the conviction of the DCE for contempt of court, Mr Osae said, �It will be in his own interest if he can resign for a new person to replace him. If not, he will have moral and social challenges in managing the assembly because of his status.� The DCE was last month jailed 14 days by a Cape Coast High Court for contempt. He has since served the jail term and is back in office. Mr Osae stressed that for now the DCE needed to explain to the assembly why he had acted the way he did. �He also needs to do a serious human relationship management because the market women for whom he went to jail are still there and the market is still under construction,� he explained. As an ex-convict On what could be done to free the DCE from the tag of �ex-convict�, Mr Osae stressed that the President had powers under the Constitution to revoke that by pardoning him of the criminal offence he had committed. �If the President comes out to pardon him, then he is no longer an ex-convict. But that will have an implication. That will then mean that others can go and commit similar offences and come to the President for pardon,� he cautioned. He said in all, it was up to the President to think through it as to whether he would want an ex-convict to represent him at the district level �because he is the one who represents the President at the local government level�. Gaps in law Mr Osae said the case of the DCE exposed a gap in the laws of the country, stressing that if it were the sitting President who had been cited for contempt, �he couldn�t be jailed because in our law, a sitting President can�t even be dragged to court�. �This means that the DCEs don�t truly represent the President at the district level, as we are made to believe under the law, because there are certain privileges extended to the President but not extended to his representatives at the district level. This, for me, is a big gap in our law that we need to resolve,� he said. On whether the incarceration of the DEC did not disqualify him from occupying public office, Mr Osae said Section Six of the Local Government Act, Act 1992, clearly specified that a person was disqualified to be a member of the assembly �if that person has been sentenced to death or imprisoned for an offence involving fraud, dishonesty or violence�. Respect for authority He said clearly the DCE was outside the said brackets but expressed surprise that the Central Regional Minister had praised the DCE as a hero. �I expected the Central Regional Minister to use the occasion to advise all DCEs and other public officers that they could not take the law into their own hands,� he said. Mr Osae said that any attempt to show disrespect to any of the three arms of government was an attempt to compromise the governance system. He wondered if the DCE was the only one who had fought for Ghana and gone to jail. �The one that sent him to jail was his attempt to flout the rules of court by failing to appear before it, amounting to contempt of court,� he added.