Members of Parliament must be blocked from being appointed as Ministers of State and also to serve on boards of various state-owned institutions, Policy Analyst, Mr Senyo Hosi has said.
In his view, lawmakers who are supposed to watch over the executive and also hold state institutions accountable at the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament sittings cannot, at the same, be players in the executive arm of government and also the institution they serve as board members or chair.
Mr Hosi had advocated a change in the 1992 constitution to prevent the President from making these appointments from Parliament.
Speaking at the 2022 Constitution Day Public Lecture on the topic: “Avoiding the impending Death of the 1992 Constitution” which was organized by the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) law school on Friday January 14, he said “With the legislature we need to expunge any requirement for the executive to appoint any member of the legislature.
“There should be no option at all, as a minister or member of board and enterprises or agencies of the state. You can’t be a player and a referee at the same time, stay in your lane.”
He also called for a change in the way justices of the Supreme Court are appointed in Ghana.
“The next one we have to work on is the judiciary. To entrench the independence of the judiciary from the executive, the authority to appoint members of the Judicial Council from the lower court must remain the preserve of the Judicial Council. We should be required to adopt an open and public evaluation process.
“The nomination to Supreme Court and for the Chief Justice should equally emanate from the Judicial Council but subject to the approval of two thirds of members in Parliament, they have to agree and own the confidence in our supreme court judges.
“This will disinsentivise political activism, a situation that is eroding confidence in the judiciary and the very core values – freedom and justice – we don’t need judges to want to catch the eyes of any president any more. That also requires that we have a revision to the constitution of the judicial council itself.
“We need to create rooms for the opposition to also have nominations on this council, it is a centre of of our democracy,” he said.
By Laud Nartey|3news.com|Ghana