Former United Nations Senior Governance Adviser Prof. Baffour Agyemang-Duah has described Ghana’s ongoing constitutional review process as legally legitimate but warned that the government’s handling of key recommendations risks undermining the intent of the exercise.
He said there was no legal basis to question the legitimacy of the review because it was being undertaken by a duly elected government.
“Legally speaking, the process is legitimate. We have a legitimate president and a government that decided to review the Constitution, so there’s nothing wrong with it,” he said.
His concerns, however, centred on what he described as the government’s decision to alter or reverse some of the recommendations submitted after the Constitutional Review Committee had consulted Ghanaians across the country.
“What is a bit disturbing is the fact that after we have allowed a committee to go around the whole country to collect the views of people and make recommendations, the government has begun to reverse some of them or amend some of them in the wrong way. I think that is the problematic part,” he stated.
Prof. Agyemang-Duah also supported calls for a measured approach to constitutional reforms, cautioning against rushing changes to the country’s supreme law.
“Constitutions are meant to elaborate processes and fulfil some essential needs of people. If you rush the process, you may end up not getting the right outcome,” he said.
He pointed to decentralisation as one of the key areas where he believes the government’s proposed approach departs from the aspirations expressed during public consultations.
According to him, previous constitutional review efforts under the late President John Evans Atta Mills had recommended the election of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs), but those proposals were weakened by the government’s White Paper at the time.
He expressed similar concerns about the current proposal, which he said would allow the government to nominate five candidates, including two women, before reducing the list to three for an election supervised by the Minister for Local Government.
Prof. Agyemang-Duah argued that such a system would entrench partisan control rather than promote genuine decentralisation.
“This creates a one-party system because if the NDC is in power, it is not going to nominate NPP people, and vice versa. In the end, we are going to have the same issue of one party ruling across the country, and that will not be decentralisation,” he said.
He maintained that true decentralisation should allow citizens to freely elect their local leaders, including independent candidates, without central government influence over the selection process.