‘Withdraw White Paper on constitution review’
Participants, including some lawyers and civil society groups, have called on the government to withdraw the White Paper on the review of the constitution and allow the desires of Ghanaians to be truly reflected in the constitution review process.
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According to them, it was undemocratic for a commission to be set up to collate the views of Ghanaians only for those views to be set aside by the President.
They have, therefore, described the issuance of the White Paper on the recommendations of the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) as an indictment of the consultation process and an insult to Ghanaians.
The call was made at a day’s forum organised by Imani Ghana and One Simple Step in Accra. It also formed part of activities to mark the 10th anniversary of Imani Ghana.
White Paper
The White Paper was issued on June 2012, prior to a proposed bill which was the outcome of a process of constitutional review with the appointment of a nine member CRC by the late Professor John Evans Atta Mills.
Leading the call was Mr Samson Lardy Anyenini, a lawyer who said the White Paper posed serious problems to the 1000 page documents since it rejected most issues of the document.
Parliament, he said, would be engaging in an illegality if it started the process to consider the proposed bill.
Six months gazetting
The bill, per the law, he said, must be gazetted for at least six months for the public to have access to it and make the necessary input before being sent to Parliament.
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He added that the White Paper should be discarded by the government as far as the recommendations of the CRC were concerned.
The Executive Director of the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG), Dr Emmanuel Akwettey, said the government’s White Paper that was issued was politically wrong and that it was important that it was pulled out for the process to continue.
The democratic process of the country, he said, should not be taken for granted since it was getting weaker day-by-day.
Need to strengthen political system
“We need to find out how we can strengthen the system. We need to build consensus on the way forward through dialogue”, he said.
This, according to him, was because the country was faced with the threat of violence in the 2016 election.
Towards addressing that threat, he called for the need to change the structure of the executive power by electing district, municipal and metropolitan chief executives so as to re-invigorate the political process.
Ambiguity in law
An expert on constitutional law, Professor Kwesi Prempeh, said the framers of the Constitution did not show enough clarity on the amendment process which had led to an ambiguity in the law regarding the amendment process.
Parliament, he said, should have taken the lead in drafting the legislation that would detail the formation of the commission of inquiry, how its membership would be constituted and other modalities that would make the commission all-inclusive.
That way, he said, the outcome of the commission’s work would be deemed to be fairly representative and thereby more acceptable compared to what the President did.
The amendment process, he said, would ultimately inure to the benefit of the electorate and but to the disadvantage of the political class.
Dangerous to leave process in hands of politicians
“It is, therefore, dangerous to leave the process in the hands of the political class”, he warned.
He opined that it was important to leave the process and go back to the beginning to work on how to go about the amendment process.
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For her part, the Founder of the Heritage Project, Ms Nana Yaa Ofori Atta, said the future of Ghanaians must not be mortgaged on the whims of any single politician and that the public must get Parliament to do the right thing.
She called for the bill, when it comes to Parliament, to be referred to the Select Committee on Legal and Constitutional Matters so that the public could be invited to make their inputs into the work of the committee prior to Parliament’s consideration.
“The process is an exercise in futility. The opportunity is in Parliament and the challenge is also in Parliament”, she said.
During the open forum, a participant said research he had undertaken indicated that Ghanaians were keenly following issues regarding the process and added that there was the likelihood that a violent protest might greet any move by the government to act contrary to public expectations.
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Writer’s email: victor.kwawukume@graphic.com.gh