PRESIDENT MILLS NAMES FIRST MINISTERIAL NOMINEES

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 ACCRA 000057 SIPDIS DEPT FOR AF/W E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: GH KDEM PGOV PHUM PINS PREL SUBJECT: PRESIDENT MILLS NAMES FIRST MINISTERIAL NOMINEES ¶1. (U) SUMMARY. President John Atta Mills announced 15 nominees for ministerial positions on January 22, drawing on a range of seasoned National Democratic Congress (NDC) politicians and some relative newcomers. Mills is seeking to strike a balance in his appointments, and Vice President John Mahama reiterated on January 26 that the government intended to fulfill its campaign promise of filling 40 per cent of ministerial positions with women. Of the 10 Ministers of State announced, five were women, two were Muslims, and two had close ties to Nana Konadu Rawlings. Four of the five Regional Ministers selected by Mills were men, and one was a Muslim, so the administration will have some catching up to do for the remaining five regional appointees. Several key ministerial positions--Defense, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Interior, and Health--have yet to be announced, but are expected by the end of the week. Mills fulfilled another campaign promise by eliminating four ministries--Parliamentary Affairs, National Security, Presidential Affairs, and Fisheries. Following are brief bios on the various nominees. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (U) ATTORNEY GENERAL AND MINISTER OF JUSTICE, Ms. Betty Mould-Iddrisu. For more than 15 years Mould-Iddrisu served as a State Attorney and later Head of the International Law Division of the Attorney General's Department. For the past five years, she has lived in London, serving as the director of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat. Her husband, Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu, served as the NDC's campaign chairman. In the Rawlings era, he was a key member of the PNDC and became Defense Minister and later advisor to Rawlings on Governmental Affairs. He is likely to become a member of the Council of State. Mould-Iddrisu is a close friend of Nana Rawlings, and worked in her gender activist movement. She is a member of the Federation of Women Lawyers and represented Ghana at the Beijing Women's Conference in 1995. Mould-Iddrisu lobbied hard to become Foreign Affairs Minister, but Mills resisted, placing her in the position for which her past experience made her exceptionally qualified. Mould-Iddrisu has already announced that she wants to separate the Attorney General position from the Ministry of Justice, a move other legal scholars have advocated to avoid a conflict of interest. The AG position can be perilous for the future of one's political career--especially if the incumbent is caught up in trying high profile political cases--and some think that Mould-Iddrisu is a logical Vice Presidential candidate if John Mahama makes a run for the presidency in 2012. ¶3. (U) MINISTER OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY, Ms. Hanna Tetteh. Tetteh earned a law degree from the University of Ghana in 1987, and in 1992 she was called to the Ghana Bar. Before becoming a Parliamentarian in 2000, where she stayed for just one term, she served as Legal, Public Affairs and Human Resource Manager of Ghana Agro Food Company (GAFCO),a food processing company with some government interest. Tetteh is also a strong gender and human rights advocate. She was Director of Communication for the NDC during the campaign; she is an articulate speaker and regularly advocated NDC issues on both television and radio. Several attempts by the pro-government press to attack her integrity were unsuccessful. Her colleague politicians in both parties hold her in high esteem. As an MP in the opposition, Tetteh had been close to Jerry Rawlings, but during the 2008 campaign she distanced herself from him and earned the respect of candidate Mills, becoming one of his closest and most trusted advisors. Her father, now deceased, was an MP with the CPP party, and her mother, a Hungarian doctor, continues to practice in Ghana. ¶4. (U) MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS, Haruna Iddrisu. Iddrisu, a former student leader, was elected into Parliament in 2004 as the MP for Tamale South, and served as the ranking minority member for Communication. He is the NDC's National Youth Organizer, and one of the youngest members of Parliament. He is an ethnic Dagomba from the Northern Region, and has a strong anti-corruption reputation. ¶5. (U) MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT, Mike Hammah. Hammah was re-elected in December 2008 as the MP for Effutu Constituency in Central Region after already serving two-terms as MP for the same constituency. He had also served as the Deputy Minister for Transport in the previous NDC administration. ¶6. (U) MINISTER OF TOURISM, Ms. Juliana Azumah Mensah. Mensah is serving her second term as MP for Ho East. A nurse by career who worked for many years in the UK, Mrs. Azumah is a strong advocate for gender equality and served as the ranking minority Member for Women & Children in the last Parliament. Mensah, however, hails from a tiny village in ACCRA 00000057 002 OF 003 the Volta Region that is known as the Kente Village, which, in part because of efforts by U.S. Peace Corps volunteers, has become a prominent tourist attraction for foreign visitors. ¶7. (U) MINISTER OF ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY, Ms. Sherry Hanny Ayitey. Currenly serving as the NDC's Vice Chair and a former Director of GIHOC Distilleries Ltd., Ayitey is the Treasurer of the 31st December Women's Movement and probably the closest confidante of Nana Rawlings. As a member of the Divestiture Implementation Committee (DIC), Ayitey was acquitted in a high profile corruption case involving the divestiture of the Ghana Rubber Estates Limited (GREL) in April 2005. She was alleged to have received various sums of money to influence the divestiture of GREL. She was also a defendant, together with Mrs. Rawlings, in the high profile GIHOC case that the Kufuor government discontinued on the eve of leaving office on January 6, ¶2009. Ayitey's brother George is a prominent economist and professor at American University in Washington, D.C.; he is president of the Free Africa Foundation which advocates for democratic reform in Africa. ¶8. (U) MINISTER OF EDUCATION, Alex Narh Tetteh Enyo. A second term MP for Ada, Tetteh Enyo is an education professional who served for more than three decades at the Ghana Education Service, where he became the Deputy Director General. Enyo retired in 2002 after he was passed over for the Chief Director job at the Education Ministry because of his close ties to the NDC. He took his revenge by running for Parliament in the strongly-NDC Ada constituency in the Greater Accra Region. In his first statement as Minister-designate, Enyo called for the senior secondary school term to return to three years from the four year term that had been implemented by the Kufuor admnistration in ¶2005. ¶9. (U) MINISTER OF LANDS AND NATURAL RESOURCES, Alhaji Collins Dauda. Dauda first served as an MP in 1993, but he lost his seat in 2000. He regained the seat in 2004, and in the 2008 election, he won re-election by just four votes. His seat, however, is still tied up in a court battle instituted by his losing NPP opponent (Dauda is still expected to be named MP). Dauda is a Muslim who served as the chairman of the Select Committee on Lands and Forestry from 1997-2000 and as the minority ranking Member for Lands and Natural Resources from 2005-2009. During his last term, he exposed several irregularities in the concessions negotiated by the previous Minister. The timber industry in Ghana, run mostly by Lebanese and Syrian businessmen, is rife with corruption, and this ministry (along with Energy and Land and Natural Resources) can be a springboard to wealth for those inclined to wet their beaks. Dauda, from the Brong-Ahafo region where most of Ghana's logging takes place, was the NDC party chair for Brong-Ahafo and is considered to be very close to President Mills. ¶10. (U) MINISTER OF ENERGY, Dr. Oteng Adjei. The former Director of Energy at the same Ministry, Dr. Adjei is a key member of the NDC energy team and NDC parliamentary candidate in the Ashanti Region. He is Academic Registrar at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, and teaches on a part-time basis at the Central University College. An NDC partisan who is an ethnic Ashanti in a region that bloc-votes for the NPP, Adjei brings ethnic balance and a technocrat's capabilities to a ministry that has been seen as a cash cow for previous ministers. ¶11. (U) MINISTER OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN'S AFFAIRS, Ms. Akua Sena Dansua. Dansua is the Member of Parliament for North Dayi in the Volta Region. A journalist by profession, she is the rare phenomenon of a woman serving a third term in Parliament. She was elected as Deputy Majority Whip when Parliament first convened two weeks ago. She had previously served as the minority ranking Member for Women & Children. She is also a member of the ECOWAS Parliament, and is known as a keen activist for gender equality. ¶12. (U) Only one of the five regional ministers nominated by President Mills is a Member of Parliament, and we therefore know less about them and will need to fill in their bio info as we get to know them better. President Kufuor, with his comfortable Parliamentary majority, appointed several MPs as Regional Ministers. We expect that the only MP Mills will appoint as Regional Minister will be the one from Greater Accra, because he can not afford to have MPs with their crucial parliamentary votes remaining outside of Accra to fulfill their regional duties while Parliament is in session. ¶13. (U) NOMINEE FOR UPPER WEST REGION, Mahmud Khalid. We know ACCRA 00000057 003 OF 003 he is a Muslim; otherwise, bio to come. ¶13. (U) NOMINEE FOR EASTER REGION, Ofosu Ampofo, is the NDC National Organizer. He is a former District Chief Executive and Deputy Minister in the previous NDC government. ¶14. (U) NOMINEE FOR GREATER ACCRA, Nii Armah Ashitey, is the newly elected MP for Klottey Korle and a former Mayor of Tema in the previous NDC government. He is a lawyer. ¶15. (U) NOMINEE FOR BRONG AHAFO REGION, Nyamekye Marfo. Former District Chief Executive for 11 years under the previous NDC administration. He contested the Sunyani West Parliamentary seat on behalf of the NDC in 2008, but lost. ¶16. (U) NOMINEE FOR CENTRAL REGION, Mrs. Ama Benyiwa-Doe, is the National Women's Organizer of the NDC. She represented the Gomoa West constituency in Parliament for three consecutive terms and served as Deputy Minister for Employment and Social Welfare in the previous NDC government. Her zealous defense and commitment to the NDC has made her a radio star on many Akan-speaking radio stations. 17, (U) COMMENT: Mills has earned high marks from most observers for the choices he has made so far. Even the NPP has avoided negative comments, as it is hard to identify any blatant attempt to exercise cronyism or place hard-line ideologues in the government. These ministerial nominations reflect a good blend of the old and the new, while fulfilling a number of the tenets expounded in the NDC manifesto promising transparency, accountability, and a stronger push for gender parity. TEITELBAUM