Under the Independence Constitution, Nkrumah as leader of the majority party in parliament, became the Prime Minister of Independent Ghana. He was a Member of Parliament, head of the Cabinet and exercised executive powers. The Constitution also provided that all Ministers should be appointed from among Members of Parliament. A Governor General who would represent the monarch of the United Kingdom as ceremonial head of state and a leader of Opposition appointed form the largest minority party in parliament. The first Governor General was Sir Charles Arden-Clarke who, as Governor of the Gold Coast helped steer the country to independence. The Earl of Listowell, in 1957, placed Arden-Clarke as the last Governor General of Ghana. The deterioration of relations between Government and the Opposition in the run up to independence was not helped by the passing of the Preventive Detention Act (PDA), in July 1958, to empower the Governor-General upon being satisfied that it was in the interest of the state so to do, to cause the detention of a citizen. Under the PDA, the Opposition was hounded for suspected acts of subversion. On 1 July 1960 Ghana became a republic and the Republican Constitution that provided that the monarch of United Kingdom ceased to be Ghana’s head of state and there should be an elected president who was at once the head of state, executive head of government and a Member of Parliament. Nkrumah won the election for the first executive president of the Republic of Ghana with 1,016,076 votes representing 89.1% of. The total votes with Danquah of the United Party as the other contestant polling 124,623 votes representing 10.9%