Former President of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), Yaw Acheampong Boafo, has asserted that the Executive Director of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Prof H. Kwasi Prempeh, was not the right person to chair the Constitution Review Committee (CRC), set up by the President.
Speaking in a recent interview on Good Evening Ghana, Yaw Boafo said that either a lawyer or a judge who has practised in Ghana should have chaired the committee, which recently presented its report to President John Dramani Mahama.
“But one of the things that got me disappointed as a very personal thing is that our constitutional history has always taught us that our Constitutional Review Committees are always chaired by persons who have the right to practise in the Republic of Ghana… You see, you must be a lawyer who has a right of audience before the court, or you must be enrolled on the roll of lawyers in Ghana, called to the Ghana Bar.
“Either you are a judge – a superior court judge – or a lawyer. SKB Asante… I know this current committee also had lawyers. But I would rather we’ve had somebody who was called to the Ghana Bar,” he said.
The former GBA president indicated that even though Prof Prempeh is a professor of law and has been called to the bar in the United States, the fact that he has not practised in Ghana does not make him the right person.
He said that it would have been better for someone called to the Ghana Bar to chair the CRC because the person would be in a better position to understand issues about the country’s laws and review them effectively.
Yaw Boafo also criticised the government’s decision not to implement the report of the previous Constitutional Review Committee.
“What is bothering me is that it was done by Professor Albert Fiadjor, and it was shelved. Now the President, in his New Year’s message, is telling us that there is now a zeal to push it. Is it because now it’s coming from civil society?
“Because if you’re not called to the Bar in Ghana, we cannot consider you one of us properly so-called. He’s a Yale-educated, fine, brilliant individual. But for our purposes, he’s not part of those of us who have our names enrolled on the roll of lawyers,” he said.
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Watch a video of his remarks below:
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