A private legal practitioner, Martin Kpebu, has pointed out that extending the presidential term of office from four to five years, as proposed by the Constitution Review Committee, amounts to a third term in disguise.
He said the danger lies in having a bad president in office for needless number of years.
“What they have done is to smuggle the third term through the back door. If you add everything up to the current two four-year tenure, it becomes ten years, you have virtually given a bad president two extra years, ” he said on December 27.
Speaking on TV3’s The KeyPoints, Mr Kpebu said that proposal does not reflect the history of the country’s constitution review processes.
“It is a non-starter,” Mr Kpebu emphasised.
He further noted that the committee should have consulted the Fiadjo Committee’s report for guidance.
“In the case of the Fiadjo Committee, Ghanaians were consulted through Short Messaging System (SMS) and we rejected the five years tenure,” Kpebu stressed.
He added that, “Why would you wait till you become president before you decide who you work with. Start planning when you are campaigning.”
The Constitutional Review Committee presented its report to President John Mahama on December 22.
Among the changes proposed is a five-year presidential term in Ghana.
It also said it did not find a place for a third term for a sitting president during its work.
Chair of the Committee, Professor H Kwasi Prempeh, said during the presentation of the final report on Monday, December 22, that nobody seemed to really like the idea of a third term.
“We couldn’t find a place for a third term; nobody really seemed to like it, there was really no demand for it,” he said.
Prof Prempeh further stated that the committee also wants a review of how heads of state-owned enterprises are appointed.
“ORAL will be done by some other body. We want to take some of the powers of the A-G and give to an Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission,” he said.
The Committee had been gathering national feedback on proposed changes to several parts of Ghana’s 1992 Constitution for months.
President John Dramani Mahama earlier mentioned that the team had briefed him and provided an overview of its initial findings during a meeting held three weeks ago.
“They met me three weeks ago and made a presentation of some of the findings they were going to make. They are quite interesting. They intend to present the final results on December 22. Once the final report is presented, we will make it known to the rest of the nation,” he stated during discussions with the National Peace Council at the Jubilee House on Wednesday, December 10.
