Lawyer and Researcher, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, says Ghanaians should not be distracted by naysayers who say the call for a new constitution will change nothing.
According to him, the rhetoric that the 1992 constitution is perfect and that Ghanaians are bad people should be entirely ignored and treated with the contempt it deserves.
“In all my life and that of those before, I have never seen any nation built out of angels and a people without blemish,” he said.
He noted that those who often advance this argument are people “whose palm kernels have been cracked by the benevolence of the gluttony that this era has enabled. They have made themselves rich from the profligacy of this era of greed, and now they shape-shift as intellectual apostles whose only aim and ambition is to preserve a status quo that has dealt very well with them.”
He warned that their tactic is one to demoralize well-meaning Ghanaians seeking change to stray from their path and accept the status quo to their own detriment.
“Instead by making you doubt the urgency of your aspirations; by invalidating your dreams and your equal claim to re-imagining a better society; they succeed in preserving the status quo. Be wary of them,” he warned.
Oliver Barker-Vormawor was speaking on JoyNews’ 4th Edition of the Change Speakers’ Series on the need for a new constitution.
According to him, his call for a new constitution, like many other Ghanaians, is to ensure a just and equitable society.
“That every constitution must be propelled not only by what it says but also what it does not. That no society that is without strong ethical and constitutional values can succeed. Those concerns are genuine,” he said.
He said the new constitution must embody the hopes and aspirations of the current and future generations and must be able to compel state officials by its moral authority.
“When we call for a new Constitution, we are calling for something much more than gathering a few lawyers, a few article 71 office holders and a few friends of the regime who will huddle in a Kempinski Conference room; to produce for us another document without a soul, just like our current one.
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“No! A new Constitution is a process! Not an event. It is an opportunity to rebuild our society’s belief and desire for change from the ground up. We must knock on every door; we must engage every citizen and we must implant in all of us a new belief for change.
“Unless we can ground the passion for a just society in the hearts and minds of people across this country. Unless people accept with joy and desire this mandate to build from among all of us, a constitution of our own making.
“Unless people understand that a new constitution of our own making, is in fact an invitation to rebuild the moral compass of this nation, we will fail. No amendments to the 1992 Constitution, be it written in Hebrew, Aramaic or Arabic can wake up consciousness and a sense of belief that is dead and gone,” he added.
