A former Chief of Staff in the government of ex-President J.J. Rawlings, Nana Ato Dadzie, has appealed to Parliament to quickly pass the Transition Bill (TB) and the Right to Information Bill (RIB).
This is because the hectic political activities in the run-up to the 2012 elections can disrupt the process leading to the promulgation of the two important bills.
He said the TB and the RIB were two critical legislation needed to be passed to address the acrimony, tension, confusion and inquisition that characterised transition periods in the country.
Nana Dadzie made the appeal at a seminar on political and administrative transitions organised by the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) in Accra on Wednesday.
Sharing some experiences and thoughts on how power was handed over in 2001, Nana Dadzie recalled how both the outgoing government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the government-elect of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had no point of reference to hand over power.
Prior to that, in 1993, the transition had been from a military regime to a civilian regime, which comprised people who were familiar with one another.
The handing over of 2001, however, was characterised by acrimony, with the outgoing government yet to come to terms with its defeat in the elections and the incoming gloating over its victory and at the same time making demands over where vehicles and other state assets were.
Nana Dadzie recounted how one senior citizen on the transitional team of the NPP in 2001 had demanded that officials of the outgoing government vacated their offices at once because during the Nkrumah overthrow they were not given any time.
He said he reminded the person to recognise the fact that the change during Nkrumah�s time was a disruption in government and was, therefore, totally different from transiting from one elected government to another.
He said the �winner-takes-all� type of multiparty politics in the country fueled the humiliation of the losers of elections and the exuberant attitude of the victors.
To deal with the challenges of transitions, Nana Dadzie proposed an administrator general to head an independent transitional agency.
He said the administrator general should be one who was of the rank of an Appeal Court judge, and explained that that person should take an inventory of all state assets and call for handing over notes.
He said such an agency would ensure that the acrimony that characterised transitions would be no more, saying that instead of two opposing parties meeting to manage the transition, the administrator general would be the intervening balance.
Mr K. B. Asante, a senior civil servant, in an intervention, disagreed with the proposal for an agency headed by an administrator general, saying the issue was being overplayed, while the call for such an agency would just be duplicating functions of the Civil Service.
He also recalled how during his tenure as a diplomat all files on African Affairs, including an inventory on Ghana�s assets abroad, had been in his care.
He said in those days, public archivists had the duty to ensure that files were kept and no public servant was permitted to take a file home and public servants who wanted to work had to go over to the offices to use the files.
He was of the view that the capacity of the Civil Service had to be built to carry on with those functions.
But Nana Dadzie countered that view, saying the administrator general and his office were necessary in the current stage of the country�s democratic progress.
Dr Emmanuel Akwetey, for his part, wanted to know the stage the bill had reached in Parliament and what civil society groups could do for its speedy passage.
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