The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG ) has said it finds the non-implementation of the reviewed 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana very troubling.
UTAG says it takes exception to the very partisan challenge of policy discontinuity that plagues Ghana’s efforts at development and violates the Directive Principles of State Policy that enjoins regimes to continue with programmes initiated by previous regimes as much as possible.
It is recalled that the NDC administration under the later Professor John Evans Atta Mills put in place a Constitutional Review Commission (CRC).
The CRC recommended comprehensive amendments to the Constitution. The government issued a white paper on the report and rejected some of these recommendations.
The accepted recommendations were translated into proposals to amend 97 articles of the 1992 Constitution by the Constitutional Review Implementation Committee.
In a communique issued after its 21st Biennial National Congress at the University for Development Studies (UDS), Tamale, from the 11th to the 13th of October 2023, UTAG said “We note that having spent state resources to set up a Constitution Review Commission of Inquiry in January 2010 to undertake such a crucial exercise of nationwide public consultations culminating in a report submitted to the government in December 2011 and the issuance of the White Paper in June 2012, Ghanaians are yet to see real efforts from successive governments to implement the recommendations of the Commission.
“This is unacceptable given the difficulties of the current times where the practice of executive authority almost veers into the realms of authoritarianism, as well as the inefficiency in governance due partly to the enormous responsibility placed on the shoulders of the executive President.
“Thus, the deliberate stalling of Ghana’s constitution review process does a great disservice to the quest for good governance and sustainable development and the general improvement in Ghanaians’ physical quality of life.
“Based on the foregoing, we call for an immediate resumption and completion of the constitution review process to strengthen the fundamental laws of Ghana for good governance, inclusiveness, and sustainable development that ‘leave no one behind’.”