The Chairman of the Constitutional Review Committee, Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh, has called for broad consensus among political actors, civil society organisations and other stakeholders to ensure the successful implementation of Ghana’s ongoing constitutional reform process.
He cautioned that the country risked weakening its constitutional framework if the implementation of the proposed reforms was driven by political considerations or partisan interests.
Prof. Prempeh said the divergent views expressed by stakeholders following the release and submission of the Committee’s report to the government, as well as the government’s White Paper on the proposals, were important to shaping the reform process.
He made the call at a national stakeholder dialogue on the constitutional reform process organised by the Citizens’ Platform for Constitutional Reform (CPCR) in Accra yesterday.
The dialogue was aimed at building consensus among stakeholders and ensuring that the proposed reforms reflected broad national interests.
Prof. Prempeh explained that the recommendations and proposals contained in the Committee’s report were designed as an interconnected system intended to address loopholes in the current Constitution, which had served the country for 30 years.
“If we pick only the politically popular items and discard some others that keep them in check or in balance, we risk leaving our constitutional framework weaker than we found it,” Prof. Prempeh said.
“This is why the next stage of the process cannot be reduced to a technical task of drafting. Drafting is the final stage in reform,” he added.
He warned that failure to build consensus around the proposed reforms could set an undesirable precedent for future constitutional review processes.
Prof. Prempeh suggested that a constitutional requirement for periodic reviews could be included in the ongoing reform process to ensure that future reviews did not depend solely on the goodwill of a particular administration.
He also urged the government to ensure transparency throughout the process by publishing draft bills before they were finalised and giving the public an opportunity to study and respond to them.
Prof. Prempeh further urged other stakeholders, including civil society organisations, trade unions and the media, to clearly indicate the recommendations they supported and raise critical questions that could help shape the outcome of the reform process.
Contributing to the dialogue virtually, Dr Mohammed Ibn Chambas, African Union High Representative for Silencing the Guns, said constitutional reforms such as the ongoing process must command broad national ownership and legitimacy.
He proposed the development of a clear roadmap for the reform process and stressed the need to ensure that any referendum arising from the process remained a national decision.
Dr Chambers also called for adequate funding for the reform process and urged stakeholders to ensure that the proposed reforms addressed the concerns that necessitated the review in the first place.
He said the success of the process would depend on the collective willingness of all stakeholders to place the long-term interests of the country above partisan and short-term considerations.
The stakeholders agreed on the need to keep the reform process open and transparent through sustained dialogue, consultation and public participation.
BY BENJAMIN ARCTON-TETTEY
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