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PP RUEHMA RUEHPA
DE RUEHAR #0057/01 0271658
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 271658Z JAN 09
FM AMEMBASSY ACCRA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 7529
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RHMFISS/CDR USAFRICOM STUTTGART GE PRIORITY

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