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Presidency wields
too much power - Peter Ala Adjetey
By Kweku Asare/Gideon Sackitey
Accra,
August 31, Ghanadot - POWER, they say corrupts and absolute
power corrupts absolutely. Is it any reason why our legal
and judicial systems provide room for checks and balances?
May be YES!
But you see if all that power
lies in the hands of the number one man in the country, what
can be done and who has the right to complain?
This is especially so since
wisdom does not lie in only one person. We may all be at
risk on the day that the leader feels different from the
reason which we all decided to put him or her up for. But
the call has gone on for many years ever since the 1992
Constitution came into being and especially within the
fourth republic that the 1992 Republican Constitution places
too much power in the hands of one man. Can we blame
someone?
May be yes, may be not. Mr Peter
Ala Adjetey, a former Speaker of Parliament and former
Chairman of the ruling New Patriotic Party, has finally put
the cat out by coming out that the President has too much
power, describing the situation as dangerous for Ghana’s
democracy. He virtually tore portions of the 1992
Constitution of Ghana and called for its review to keep
abreast with the times.
Mr Ala Adjetey, who is now back
into private life, said the 1992 Constitution was adopted in
circumstances in which real freedom did not exist in Ghana
and there was no guarantee of fundamental human rights and
freedoms.
He said, for instance, that the
provisions dealing with the Legislature as contained in
Chapter 10 of the 1992 Constitution needed to be closely
examined to see whether they provide for or ensured, “the
separation of political power among different high office
persons so that there is effective check on power by power".
Mr Ala Adjetey made the
comments as the guest speaker of a lecture by Citizens
Network for Democracy and Economic Development (CNDED), a
NGO that aims at addressing issues of economics, governance
and political philosophy. A document on the operations of
CNDED said they also focus on how these three forces should
be properly aligned to produce a just and equitable country
operated on free-market principles and respect for the
rights of the individual.
Specifically, Mr Ala Adjetey
said although Article 93(2) vested the legislative power of
Ghana in Parliament, it also limited the exercise of that
power to the extent contained in the Constitution. He said
accordingly, Parliament still faces the problem of “no go"
areas for Parliament as prescribed by the Constitution,
noting that, these "no go" areas were contained in Articles
107 and 108.
"The nation was chafing under a
military dictatorship that had maintained its stranglehold
on power for some 10 years and that violently suppressed all
attempts to overthrow it, in several instances accompanied
by bloodshed. Its leaders had made no secret of the fact
that they were not entirely enthused by liberal democratic
ideas and would not hesitate to ride roughshod over
individual liberties," he emphasized.
The former Speaker said those
times were not a political atmosphere calculated to generate
a freely agreed liberal democratic constitution and one
should not be-surprised at not finding all that one would
desire and expect in a constitution.
"The Consultative Assembly
established by the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC),
like the Constituent Assembly established by the Supreme
Military Council, was not clothed with jurisdiction to
enact, promulgate and bring into force the Constitution for
Ghana that it would prepare and agree upon," he noted. (The
CA was the body that put together the 1992 Constitution)
Mr Ala Adjetey said again the
serious business of shaping a constitution was left to an
unelected body that had taken power illegitimately by force
of arms to enact, promulgate and bring into force a new
Constitution for Ghana. It was true, he noted that, the
draft Constitution that came out of the Consultative
Assembly was submitted to a referendum on April 28, 1992 and
was duly approved at the referendum.
“It is submitted, however, that
the people of Ghana did not really have entirely free hands
in voting at the referendum, since at the referendum they
were presented with the Scylla of accepting the draft with
all its serious imperfections and failure to meet the
standards required of a modern liberal democratic Republic,
and the Charybdis of rejecting the draft Constitution and
being saddled with a military dictatorship represented by
the PNDC for a number of years uncertain. “
"This
was a cruel choice,” he declared pointedly.
He said the power of the purse
was away from the hands of Parliament and vested in the
hands of the Executive which, he argued, “should not have
been so.”
Mr Ala Adjetey said, for
instance, that the appointment of Justices to the superior
courts should have been entrusted into the hands of an
independent body, but rather entrusted to the Executive! He
said another area of defects was Chapter Six of the 1992
Constitution, which deals with the Directive Principles of
State Policy, which, he said, must gladden the hearts of
liberal democrats worldwide but its wording does not
expressly provide enforceability by judicial proceedings.
"This has given rise to
pessimists and enemies or opponents of liberal democracy to
contend that the principles were not enforceable," he
stated.
Thus, its adoption as the
correct constitutional position by the Supreme Court would
have serious consequences for the rule of law and the
protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms in the
country's body politic.
Illustrating the contradiction
in the Directive Principles of State Policy, Mr Ala Adjetey
cited Clause (1) (b) of Article (2) of the 1992
Constitution, which provides that a person who alleges that
any act or omission of any person "is inconsistent with, or
is in contravention of a provision of this Constitution"
could institute proceedings in the Supreme Court for a
declaration to that effect.
However, he said, the Directive
Principles were contested by many on the Bench and out of it
as non-justiceable, which meant that persons listed in
Clause (1) of Article 34 had failed to be guided by any of
the principles in Chapter SIX, "if such a person cannot
avail himself of the right conferred by Article Two to bring
an action in the Supreme Court for a declaration to that
effect".
Another serious drawback,
according to Mr Ala Adjetey, was Article 60(11) of Chapter
Eight, which enjoins the Speaker of Parliament to perform
the functions of the President:
"Where the President and the
Vice-President are both unable to perform the functions of
the President, the Speaker of Parliament shall perform those
functions or a new President assumes office, as the case may
be."
The former Speaker of Parliament
said that provision had been taken for granted to mean that
where both the President and the Vice-President were absent
from the country in the ordinary physical sense, the Speaker
of Parliament was enjoined to perform those functions.
He also challenged some
provisions of Chapter 20, which deals with decentralization
and local government, because those provisions tended to
make the District Assembly and its municipal and
metropolitan variations only extensions of the central
government.
"As
you might be aware, the Ghana Bar Association refused
participation in the Consultative Assembly and like I said
anytime the “right thinking” members of society refuse to
contribute to the shaping of society, they have chosen to
allow anything to pass and should be responsible for what
holds them “prisoner”. However, given a new situation that
Ghanaians agree, through a referendum, we could redress this
anomaly." He said
Gideon Sackitey, ACCRA,
August 31, 2007, Ghanadot.com
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