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

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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

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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