The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has tasked the government to establish a Constituent Assembly to deliberate on the proposed changes to the 1992 Constitution before putting them to a referendum.
The party said the move was necessary to build a broad national consensus on the proposed reforms and resolve differences between the government and the Constitution Review Committee (CRC).
The Chairman of the NPP Policy Coordination Committee, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, made the call at a press conference in Accra yesterday to state the party’s position on the government’s response to the CRC report.
He said the NPP supported some amendments to the Constitution but believed that the scale of the proposed changes required a broader process than an ordinary constitutional amendment.
Broad representation
Mr Oppong Nkrumah said the proposed Constituent Assembly should include representatives of political parties, organised labour, professional bodies, the National House of Chiefs, religious organisations, women’s groups, persons with disabilities, students and the youth, the private sector, civil society and the regions.
He said the Assembly would provide a platform for stakeholders to discuss and resolve the differences surrounding the proposed reforms.
“The sequence the NPP supports is consultation by the Committee, deliberation by a Constituent Assembly, ratification by the people,” he said.
206 proposals
Mr Oppong Nkrumah said the CRC proposed 206 changes, which comprised amendments to 147 of the Constitution’s 299 Articles and 59 new provisions.
He said the proposals covered major areas of governance, including the Executive, Parliament, the Judiciary, independent constitutional institutions and local government.
“These are not adjustments to a Constitution.
They amount to the overhaul of a Constitution and, in substance, the enactment of a new one,” he said.
He argued that such a major exercise should not be handled as routine parliamentary business, followed by a referendum.
100 disagreements
Mr Oppong Nkrumah said the need for a broad-based deliberative process had become more important because of differences between the government and the CRC.
He said the government had adopted different positions from those of the independent committee on 100 of the 147 recommendations.
Among the issues, he said, were the proposed five-year presidential term, the size of Parliament, the appointment or election of certain MPs, whether MPs should serve as Ministers, the election of District Chief Executives and the independence and funding of oversight institutions.
He stressed that there was currently no platform for the government, opposition parties and other stakeholders to negotiate those differences.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah said Ghana’s previous constitutional processes demonstrated the importance of broad consultation and deliberation.
He cited the Constituent Assemblies that preceded the 1969 and 1979 Constitutions and the 260-member Consultative Assembly that worked on the 1992 Constitution.
He said the expert work that preceded those Constitutions was subjected to further deliberation by representative bodies before the final documents acquired a legal force.
The CRC, chaired by Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh, was established by President John Dramani Mahama in January 2025 to review the 1992 Constitution.
It completed its consultations and submitted its final report to the President in December 2025.
The government has since issued its response to the recommendations and established an Implementation Committee to work on the reforms.
NPP’s position
Mr Oppong Nkrumah said the NPP would not support taking the government’s preferred package of amendments to a referendum without a mechanism for building consensus.
He said the proposed Constituent Assembly should first deliberate on the disputed issues and produce a text that reflected a broad national agreement before it was submitted to Ghanaians.
“The Constitution is not the property of the NDC or the NPP. It belongs to the people of Ghana,” he said.
He urged the government to establish the Assembly and provide what he described as “the table” for stakeholders to discuss and settle the outstanding issues before asking Ghanaians to vote.
