Governance expert and former United Nations governance advisor, Professor Baffour Agyeman-Duah, has said that President Akufo-Addo, in his State of the Nation Address failed to touch on the lapses in Ghana’s 1992 constitution.
Prof Agyeman-Duah was of the view that President Akufo-Addo “seemed satisfied with the status quo” regarding the excessive power the executive wields under the constitution.
He maintained that the President could have used his address to point out some of the grey areas in the constitution, having been in office for the last seven years.
Reacting to the President’s remarks that “the buck stops with the president”, Prof Agyeman-Duah said, “That statement is an oversimplification of an issue that is burdening all Ghanaians”.
“In his address, he did spend quite some time on the judiciary, which is one key branch of government and also somehow on the legislature. But most of the difficulties that people are facing in this country are the creation of the executive”, he said.
Prof Agyeman-Duah added, “So once he [President Akufo-Addo] said the buck stops with me as the president, I wished he had gone further to explain to citizens those critical issues that he thinks concern citizens that he wasn’t able to deal with”.
According to the governance expert, the President did not spend enough time on the executive branch of government, indicating that it would have been “more appropriate”.
“But he was too short [with] his presentation on the executive”, Prof Agyeman-Duah told Alfred Ocansey, host of Ghana Tonight on TV3.
Furthermore, Prof Agyeman-Duah stressed the importance of reforms within the executive as provided in the constitution that were not addressed by President Akufo-Addo.
Also, Prof Agyeman-Duah disagreed with President Akufo-Addo’s assertion that the current constitution should not be tampered with.
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“When he even referred to the review of the constitution, he seemed to have expressed some kind of satisfaction with the status quo, saying that we didn’t have to tamper with the constitution”.
According to the expert, President Akufo-Addo should be the first to identify that “there are serious problems with the constitution”.
“Now that he is leaving this would have been a fine opportunity to tell citizens some of the limitations and the challenges so that he could have at least made some broad recommendations on how we can seek to reform the constitution”, he added.
Meanwhile, President Akufo-Addo, addressing the nation on Tuesday, February 27, noted, amongst other concerns, that “there is no ambiguity about where the buck stops when it comes to responsibility for what happens in the government”.
“It stops with the President, he or she has ultimate responsibility”, he emphasised.
However, the Minority Leader in Parliament, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, has expressed disagreement with President Akufo-Addo on the current state of the country.
He said contrary to the bright picture painted by the President in his penultimate State of the Nation Address (SONA) to the 8th Parliament, Ghanaians are not happy.