Private Legal Practitioner, Martin Kpebu, says that politicians have been adamant to review the 1992 Constitution in spite of recommendations to do so because it serves their parochial interest.
This, Mr Kpebu explained in an interview on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Monday, is due to the power they enjoy from it, hence their disinterest in reviewing the 1992 Constitution to reduce the power it gives them.
According to him, all the executive presidents the country has had, with the exception of the late Professor Atta Mills, “enjoy the trappings of power so they were not interested” in a review.
“Obviously power sweet and absolute power corrupts …but you see Mills when he came, he said no, not under my watch… Apart from Mills, the rest of the presidents have become (lovers of) personal aggrandisement like what the current president is doing – making money for his family,” he said while contributing to the topic 30 years of Ghana’s Constitution.
There have been countless calls to have the 1992 Constitution reviewed, however, every process undertaken to amend the constitution has stalled.
According to the legal Practitioner, the 1992 Constitution needs a lot of heavy, substantial amendments from the executive power to other sections.
In a related development, the Dean of UPSA Law School, Professor Kofi Abotsi has called for a review of Article 78 Clause 1 of the 1992 Constitution, which requires the President to appoint majority of his ministers from among parliamentarians.
According to him, that constitutional provision “doesn’t seem to make sense both in operational and philosophical terms.”
He acknowledged though that the framers of the Constitution had the best of intentions as they sought to prevent tension between the two arms of government – Executive and Legislature. Nonetheless, he found the fusion of executive with legislature problematic.
“I think the 1981 coup d’etat didn’t happen because of the constitutional crisis due to the clean break between the legislature and executive. I think 1981 had its own problems. So 1992 could have still had a clean break because the two are populated by parties.
“The executive is populated by the winning party and the legislature is populated by political parties of different persuasions and so invariably, that coordination is expected to be there,” he said.
Prof Abotsi made this assertion on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Thursday, January 5, 2023 while speaking on the topic, ‘Constitutional Governance and Disappointments, 30 years on’.
- Cedi losing stability against the dollar
- How a pastor’s ill-advice killed my mother – Dr Boadi Nyamekye
- Herbalist dies in a hotel after meeting with pastor’s wife
