Prof. David Millar, president of the Millar Institute of Transdisciplinary and Cultural Studies, has jumped to the defence of individuals, who held themselves as apolitical but are now being appointed into the National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration led by President John Dramani Mahama.
The said individuals, most of them members of advocacy groups and academics, had been fierce critics of the immediate past Akufo-Addo administration.
Following their appointment into the Mahama administration, some, particularly, members of the now opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), have called them out, accusing them of being members of being members of the governing NDC all the while and doing its bidding under the guise of neutrality and civil advocacy.
But Prof. Millar said it is flawed to assume that because they have accepted to serve in the NDC government, they are members of the party and had been doing its bidding.
He argued that most advocates, who hold themselves as neutrals on political issues, are always ready to serve in government and will avail themselves if they are afforded the opportunity.
“It’s a very faulty assumption that the fact that I’m neutral doesn’t mean I’m not available to serve a country. And for me, I know most of those who are neutral are always positioning themselves to serve the country and bring some neutrality to bear on governance,” he stated in an interview on State of Our Nation on Dreamz FM.
“You can take a position in a party, but you are either sitting on the fence or you are a silent supporter of even the party that they are against.”
He, however, stated that some of them may be card-bearing members of political parties but added that they may actually be members of opposition parties.
For him, instead of being fixated with their political leanings, the public should focused on holding them to their words and the standards of good governance they had been advocating.
“I would want to watch them with a different lens. How far they play will the same game of neutrality? If they sway away from what we know them to be, then they are being hypocritical. They just work their way into governance.”
