The President, John Dramani Mahama, recently announced that the process for the amendment of some entrenched provisions in the 1992 Constitution would be tested through a referendum, which is being targeted to fall with the next cycle of the District Level Elections.
This has been followed up with the inauguration of the Constitutional Amendment Implementation Committee by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice.
We note, however, that the district assembly elections have never been attractive to large segments of the electorate, mostly recording less that 40 per cent voter turnout.
Therefore, if the District Level Elections have been targeted for a national referendum, then we must set clear signposts and establish landmarks that will help us achieve our objective and ensure higher voter participation beyond the minimum level of 40 per cent turnout and 75 per cent acceptance.
Any national referendum to amend an entrenched provision in the Constitution must have certainty, unlike the Presidential election, which must attract more than 50 per cent, arrangement that many, rather simplistically and incorrectly, have described as "50 per cent plus one" thereby conflating percentages with absolute figures.
Article 290 has elaborate provision of entrenched clauses and outlines the processes that such enactments have to go through to become lawfully amended whilst Article 291 provides for how entrenched provisions are to be amended.
Before an entrenched bill can be introduced in Parliament, the Speaker must send it to the Council of State for advice within 30 days.
Then the bill must be published in the Gazette.
It is only at the end of six months that the bill can be introduced into Parliament.
Once the bill is read the first time, a national referendum must be organised before its passage by Parliament.
These are set out under Clauses (2), (3) (4), (5) and (6) of Article 290.
For an entrenched clause, it can only be introduced before Parliament, where it has been published twice in the Gazette of an interval of three months between the two publications, and after a further 10 days before the First Reading and then referred by the Speaker of Parliament to the Council of State for advice within 30 days after which it requires at least two-thirds majority in Parliament.
These are provided under Article 291(1), (2), (3) and (4).
But here is how I want to appeal, especially to our Members of Parliament, to look beyond parochial political party and partisan interests and work towards the collective good of our country and people.
History must be a guide. When the predominantly one-party government that emerged by default after the first government under the Fourth Republic — the alliance between the National Democratic Congress, with Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings as President, and the National Convention Party, with Mr Kow Nkensen Arkaah as Vice-President — had the opportunity to amend portions of the Constitution, there were some serious missteps. One amendment was focused on Mr Arkaah, stripping the Vice-President of all the Constitutional mandates because of the rifts between Flt Lt Rawlings and Mr Arkaah.
Yet another mess culminated in another amendment directed at Mr Peter Ala Adjetey, who was the chairman of the New Patriotic Party and a member of the National Media Commission, which restricted and barred persons holding any position in a political party from serving on the NMC.
Now our Vice-Presidents have no Constitutional mandate and become idle if they are not assigned roles by our Presidents.
That is how visits to Ministries and public institutions by our Vice-Presidents become news but they cannot technically be held liable for the weaknesses or achievements of the government.
In the case of the NMC, soon after the amendment, the government nominated Prof. Kofi Awoonor, then Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, and it was by providential intervention when he took permission minutes before the swearing in of the reconstituted NMC in 2000 to attend to an NDC function which exposed the reality.
Thankfully, Prof. Awoonor could not be sworn in as a member of the NMC. Accordingly, as Executive Secretary of the NMC, I drew the attention of Nana Ato Dadzie to the fact and a new person, Dr Josiah Aryeh, replaced him.
That was before Dr Aryeh became the General Secretary of the NDC.
If Prof. Awoonor had been sworn in as a member of the NMC, the government would not have had it easy and could not have evaded the charge of disrespect for constitutionalism.
We need certainty in provisions to avert the situation where a vacancy has occurred at the Council of State, where although there are living former Chief Justices, none had been appointed to fill the space abandoned nearly a year now by Her Ladyship Sophia Akufo.
We have all along bemoaned the excessive powers of the President but because of the resentment against the Ghana Bar Association, one recommendation by the latest constitutional review committee, is the introduction of the phrase, "to be appointed by the President", to replace all provisions whose intendment has been to allow identified and recognised groups to make nominations to serve on certain constitutional and administrative bodies as a check on excessive executive powers, now vest in the President.
If we do not look towards the broader national interest, this simple but innocuous phrase could come back to haunt us, when our Presidents begin to capriciously appoint individuals, in the name of groups, who may not even recognise the public standing of such individuals, to represent them because that is what the Constitution provides, just as we were nearly touched and have been haunted by Article 146 following the removal of the Chief Justice Her Ladyship Gertrude Torkonoo.
Already Prof. Henry Kwasi Prempeh has indicated opposition towards certain comments from the Attorney General about certain proposals his committee did not make but which have been presented as part of their work.
Those in government must not appear to suggest that just like the ignominious veto powe, exercised lawfully by the five permanent member countries of the United Nations, because they appoint committees, they have more effective power and mandate to change recommendations which are the organic outcomes of thorough, systematic, diffused and open engagements involving the rank and file of our people and among the best cluster of talents in identified areas of national endeavours.
God does not add any more wisdom and intelligence to anybody who contests an electable position because they have won and change them dramatically the day after election.
Whilst they access more knowledge and information, that in themselves do not make politicians superior to all other citizens.
For example, where the Attorney General admitted that the open consultations suggested limiting the age of Presidential candidates to 30, but ‘we decided that it should be 35' because it represents a more objective development, that in itself creates a problem as it seeks to throw away that which came out of transparent consultations for an alternative whose source only a few could testify.
We need to remind ourselves and each other that, Osagyefo Dr Kwamena Nkrumah did not declare one-party state through any unlawful means but through a constitutional process. More importantly, he did not abuse fundamental human rights but the Constitution gave him the power and authority to declare such and where he did not declare, he did not breach any constitutional or legal provision.
A word to the wise must be more than enough.
Beyond pondering these matters, we must equally rethink joining the referendum to next year's District Level Elections, not to burn our fingers and in vain.
