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District, Municipal and Metropolitan Chief Executive positions are not to be elective, Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah, Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, has said. Election of people to those offices on partisan basis, he said, was untenable for administrative, security and political reasons. Mr Afriyie Ankrah said these at a press briefing yesterday to herald an inter-party consultation on �Twenty Years of Decentralization and Local Governance in Ghana� to be held at Akosombo this weekend. The consultation process is to provide a platform for political parties to share ideas and build a consensus on the way forward for Ghana�s decentralization process. He said the need to review the decentralization process and strengthen the assemblies had been recognised by most political parties as indicated in their manifestos and programmes. �We anticipate that some of the areas that will come up for review will include the size and performance of the local government sub-structures,� he said. Also to be discussed is the issues of accountability by Chief Executives and government appointees as well as the application of the District Assemblies Common Fund. �While the 1992 Constitution made political and administrative decentralization imperative, we have also come to realise that there is the need to clarify and agree on our interpretation of the concept,� he said. The government, he said, was aiming at multiparty consensus on the issue so that any reform to be agreed upon would be implemented regardless of the political party in government. Mr Afriyie-Ankrah said the consultation would further provide an opportunity for the parties to reflect on the changing national and international socio-economic, technological and political environment and their implications for local government development. �Though the focus will be on reforming decentralization in the foreseeable future, efforts will be made to distill issues for a proposed legislative and constitutional reform,� he said. He said effective and pro-poor local governance should have a national character based on consensus by the political parties. The meeting is being organized by the Ministry in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Institute of Local Government Studies.