The nation’s 1992 Constitution has served the citizenry well in the last three decades but it is time for the supreme law of the land to be reviewed.
It must be targeted principally at devolving political power effectively and efficiently to allow authorities to undertake growth and development at the local level.
Professor Baffour Agyemang-Duah, a governance expert, who made the call, observed that the review would also ensure that over-concentration of power in the Executive and the Central Government were efficiently and effectively curtailed.
“It is about time we review the 1992 Constitution because I am of the belief that the context under which it was promulgated was not good however, it has served us very well for 30 years and has stabilised and secured us and I stand up for the Constitution.
“But it is about time to review it and remove, change and amend certain aspects that hinder our progress, growth, development and there are many aspects that I can spend all day talking about and my interest is not even with entrenched clauses, adding that: “those people will be judged by God, so I am not interested,” Prof. Agyeman-Duah pointed out.
He bemoaned processes where due to concentration of power at the centre, murder cases for instance must be okayed at national level for prosecution to take place and lamented that the two dominant parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had tasted power which had rotated between them and they know sweetness of power between them.
According to him, he did not believe any of the two parties would accept complete amendment of the Constitution and outlined how multi-layer appointments from national, regional and district levels and not to talk of appointments as board members were all concentrated in presidents, be it former, present and future, if the review did not take place.
“That is why the 1992 Constitution needs serious review to decentralise administration of power and governance in the country and the NPP and the NDC are not going to change anything because it is in their favour, that is why I support civil society’s call for review of the Constitution,” Prof. Agyeman-Duah averred. –ghanaweb.com
