The government has announced that it will seek to implement major constitutional reforms, including a five-year presidential and parliamentary term, a cap on the number of ministers and elected local chief executives.
Presidential and parliamentary terms would increase from four to five years to reduce election pressure and aid policy work.
A cap on the number of ministers of state to 60 is suggested, and increasing the number of parliamentary seats from 275 to 300, reserving new seats via proportional representation for women, youth and people with disabilities.
Finally, Ghanaians with dual citizenship would be allowed to run for parliament without giving up their other citizenship.
Turning to governance and local authority issues, in relation to local elections, Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) will be elected rather than appointed by the President.
In addition, the age when someone can run for president drops from 40 to 35 years. The proposed changes require formal public engagement and a national referendum before becoming law.
Will constitutional reforms fix Ghana’s democracy problems?
It will be recalled that the constitutional reform process began in early 2025 with the appointment of a Constitution Review Committee under the chairmanship of Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh.
The Committee embarked on a lengthy, thorough and painstaking process of engagement: hearing from thousands of Ghanaians in all parts of the country, learning what they thought was right and wrong with Ghana’s democracy.
Prof. Prempeh and his colleagues carefully collated responses and passed on their findings to the government.
After a lengthy period of deliberation, the government has come up with the proposals for reform mentioned above.
Despite being well into its third decade, Ghana’s democracy is a constant challenge.
Democratic advances are necessarily dependent on pressure from below, including from a vibrant and vigorous civil society.
Many have expressed fears that Ghana’s democracy will fail without reforms.
Citizens, via civil society, should use their moral agency to encourage the country’s democratic institutions to work harder to moderate economic and social iniquities which, many Ghanaians believe, are getting worse.
The alternative, some fear, is the return of military government as is currently the case in Ghana’s neighbour, Burkina Faso.
Democratic strengths and democratic weaknesses
Ghana’s democratic strengths include: Viable multiparty system; periodic constitutional and electoral reforms designed to improve the structure and process of elections; a lively civil society and independent media; and widespread acknowledgement of the importance of democratic norms by both the mass of ordinary Ghanaian citizens and political elites, behaviourally, attitudinally, and constitutionally.
Ghana’s democratic weaknesses include: Electoral processes that continue to be saddled with monumental flaws that undermine the integrity of elections and pose a threat of democratic relapse; an executive presidency with wide, some claim excessive, powers; ethnically/tribally based politics undermining political stability; periodic post-election violence; and civil society’s (very) limited policy influence.
What is wrong with Ghana’s democracy?
Recent Afrobarometer data indicate that democracy is not working well for many, perhaps most, Ghanaians for several reasons: widespread perceptions of increased petty and state-level corruption, pessimism about the direction of national development, and declining confidence that government has the will or ability to fix things.
Afrobarometer data identify several pressing issues for many Ghanaians, including persistent public sector corruption, including among political elites, and a general sense that the nation is going in the ‘wrong direction’.
This indicates that democracy per se is not the problem, but rather that many Ghanaians believe that democracy is not working well for them, including the perception that having a democratically elected government does not fix the cancer of corruption.
More worrying still, perhaps, a sizeable percentage of Ghanaians express support for military intervention in politics if elected leaders abuse their mandate.
The Centre for Democratic Development-Ghana (CDD-Ghana) discovered in 2024 that 51 per cent of citizens believe the Ghana Armed
Forces should take control in such circumstances — an 11-percentage point increase from 40 per cent in 2022.
At the same time, while there is still substantial public opposition to military involvement in politics, the proportion of Ghanaians who believe the military should never intervene politically declined from 55 per cent in 2022 to 47 per cent in 2024.
Will constitutional reforms fix democratic ‘backsliding’?
What, then, are the most important problems confronting Ghana?
Afrobarometer asked Ghanaians what ‘in your opinion, are the most important problems … that government should address?’
Responses were, in descending order of importance: Management of the economy, unemployment, infrastructure/roads, water supply and corruption.
The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, recently claimed that Ghana’s democracy is ‘backsliding’.
He was referring to the fact that despite a strong democratic framework, political elites regularly use undemocratic practices like patronage and clientelism, leading to poor governance and public discontent.
Whether the planned constitutional reforms will halt democratic ‘backsliding’ remains to be seen.
The writer is Emeritus Professor of Politics, London Metropolitan University, UK.
