A thirty-eight-chapter document entitled, “Proposals For The Amendment To The Constitution Of The New Patriotic Party, December 2021,” started flashing across social media especially on WhatsApp group pages.
Each chapter was authored by individual or group of individual NPP members who thought their views on the running of the Party would turn it into a more successful political institution in Africa.
Not to express my opinion on each and every chapter, I am of the view that with such a volume of proposals in this 153-page document, it will serve the Party better for it to be released in very good time to stakeholders for thorough study and comments on its contents.To allow only a few days of examination and go straight to vote on them, would not be helpful to the Party.
The authors of the proposals must be allowed to explain why they put up what they did and healthy debates will end with the Party becoming the winner. As it is, genuine suspicions cannot be overruled. As it is the late release of the document will erode whatever trust, members in general have for the Party executives. In fact, some will find this late release, as an act of disrespect towards Party members on whose sweat and toils the Party is found in government, today.
Some members are suggesting that, the whole constitution should be changed because it has become a law that,some people live by and others die by. The constitution seems powerless in dealing with some party members but swift in dealing with others.
Today, the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, is being accused for not letting the country go the way it should. Just like the recent proposals for the amendment to the NPP constitution,the draft constitution was hurled on Ghanaians and before we could digest its contents, we were driven out of our homes and made to queue up to vote either “Yes” or “No” for its abduction as the Supreme Law of the land.
Many Ghanaians, twenty-eight years after its adoption, have found holes in the constitution that should not be there if law and order must cut across the entire citizenry of Ghana.
Without allowing Party members to thoroughly examine the proposed amendments and come up with recommendations to either, maintain, amend or completely throw them out, harm could be created within the rank and file.
Rich debates would have rather enrich the constitution and make it stand out as the best document implemented to guide a political group. The slogan, “rule of law,”will stand out as the motto of what guides the Party members to do political business, seeking to benefit everyone.
However, as it is, some amendments have started tearing the Party apart even before they are adopted or rejected at the Kumasi Conference. In whichever way things go, without enough jaw-jaw, division will surely erupt between brothers and brothers, sisters and sisters and brothers and sisters. This is not healthy, what with, this pledge and ambition to break the eight.
The Party executives must explain why the delay in the presentation of these important amendment to the people to whom it matters most.
With thirty-eight amendments presented in the document, we hear, John Buadu, the General Secretary of the Party coming out to say that the proposals were in actual fact, ninety-one and not thirty-eight. Where from these fifty-three extra proposals? Why were they kept away from Party members until now?
We remember how certain provisions of the 1992 Constitutions were smuggled into the final draft document before submitted to Jerry John Rawlings. These include the entrenched provision, which hang on our necks like marble boulders, but which we cannot remove, because the law forbids us to.
Are these fifty-three proposals going to be smuggled into the Party’s constitution? If that is the intention, how will the entire membership take this?
The Party has resolved to Break-the-Eight but in my opinion, this could rather Break-the-Party.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.
