The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has described the government’s approach to the ongoing review of Ghana’s 1992 Constitution as an attempt to overhaul the country’s constitutional order fundamentally.
The party says the proposed changes are too extensive to be treated as ordinary amendments under Chapter 25 of the Constitution and should instead be subjected to a broader national deliberative process.
Addressing the press in Accra, the NPP Policy Coordination Committee Chairman, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, said the Constitution Review Committee had proposed amendments to 147 of the Constitution’s 299 articles.
He said the committee had also proposed 59 entirely new provisions, bringing the total number of propositions to 206. According to him, the proposals affect the Executive, Parliament, the Judiciary, independent constitutional institutions and local government.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah argued that changing nearly half of the existing constitutional provisions, while introducing dozens of new provisions, constituted a major alteration of Ghana’s constitutional framework.
He said the NPP accepted that some provisions of the 1992 Constitution needed to be amended to strengthen accountability, deepen decentralisation and modernise public institutions.
However, he said the party believed the scale of the current exercise demanded a process that went beyond government drafting, parliamentary consideration and a referendum.
According to the lawmaker, the NPP was particularly concerned about what it described as differences between the CRC’s recommendations and the government’s position on a significant number of issues.
He claimed that, out of the 147 recommendations, the government had fully accepted 22 and partially accepted 25, while taking a different position on the remaining recommendations. The government has separately explained that its position paper reflects its consideration of the CRC’s proposals and includes both accepted recommendations and alternative positions.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah said the absence of a formal platform for political parties and other stakeholders to negotiate areas of disagreement could affect the level of consensus surrounding the final constitutional reforms.
He therefore called for a Constituent or Consultative Assembly to deliberate on the proposals before they are translated into final legislative and referendum measures, arguing that the exercise should produce a broadly negotiated constitutional settlement rather than a document identified primarily with the government of the day.
By: Daniel Orlando/newsalertgh.com
