Haruna Iddrisu with Nana Addo
• Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu believes the time is ripe for a constitutional review
• He holds that the current Constitution gives too much powers to the president
• He wants the current Parliament to leverage on its composition to champion the review process
The 1992 Constitution vests too much power in the leader of the executive arm of government, the President, and there is the need to change that.
This is the view of Minority Leader and Member of Parliament for Tamale South, Haruna Iddrisu. He believes the time is ripe for Ghana to finally review the supreme law of the land with the need to principally water down the powers of the First Gentleman of the land.
Speaking on the Point of View programme which aired on Accra-based Citi TV on September 28, the lawmaker advanced that the composition of the current Parliament offered the best opportunity at a united Constitutional review process.
“Let’s see a roadmap to radical constitutional amendment beyond what professor Mills did in 2010, (that is ) appointing Prof Emeritus Fiadjoe to lead the Constitutional Review Committee.
“What is the best practice in the world when you have a hung parliament, 137 – 137 (MPs apiece) is that, it gives you a unique opportunity to hold the country together and to undertake rapid constitutional review and amendment.
“This 1992 Constitution is excessively loaded with presidential powers, we need to water it down. Why must the president appoint the Chief Executive of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital? What business does the president get to do with that?” Haruna submitted.
Asked about whether President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo should revisit the report of the Mills review body, Haruna averred that a new process will not be a bad idea despite admitting that Mills had issued a White Paper on the Fiadjoe report.
“He (Akufo-Addo) can initiate and bring the country along, a 5, 7 or 9-member commission, four from each side with an academic or a respected jurist to lead the process. Don’t forget that President Mills even got a White paper issued on it. What is it that has stopped us from letting it work?”
He dismissed a view that the doubling of MPs as ministers was one of the points in the Fiadjoe report that caused Parliament to oppose the report. Haruna said over and above such recommendations, the report was big on decentralization and how to manage Ghana’s mineral resources.
He believes the 8th Parliament, which has 137 lawmakers on the part of the opposition National Democratic Congress and the ruling New Patriotic Party, offers Ghana an opportunity to transit into an improved Constitution.
Parliament has only one member who is in the house without running on a party platform. Fomena MP Andrew Amoako Asiamah, who is also the second deputy speaker of Parliament, has however agreed to work with the NPP, hence the party has been classified as the Majority Group in the legislature.