More debates on Kufuor's proposal( centre spread), January 9, 2009

Story: Michael Donkor
THE proposal by the Immediate Past President, Mr John Agyekum Kufuor, for the extension of the tenure of office of future presidents and the regulation of the term of members of the Electoral Commission (EC) has engendered debate among civil society organisations, academicians and some participants at this year’s New Year School.
Reacting to the proposal in an interview in Accra, Mr Laary Bimi, the Chairman of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), and two senior accademicians of the university of Ghana, Prof Kwame Boafo-Arthur, the Head of the Political Science Department, and Dr Raymond Atugubah, a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, disagreed with the suggestions.
Mr Bimi argued that it was too early to start tampering with the Constitution and explained that since the Constitution came into being, the country had had only two former Presidents so it was too early to start talking about amending it.
Mr Bimi argued that the country needed to test the Constitution against the experiences of more presidents, a situation which called for patience and tolerance, and suggested that more governments should be allowed to practise the Constitution for at least a generation and that the present generation should pass it on to the next generation for it to decide whether they would want to amend it or not.
He noted that the country had more pressing issues, such as poverty reduction and other social challenges, which should be tackled with its meagre resources, instead of spending those resources on constitutional amendments for the extension of the tenure of office of the President or fixing a tenure for the EC.
On the suggestion to elect the chairmen of the EC with fixed tenures through an electoral college, Mr Bimi said it should be considered against the country’s history and made reference to a period during the era of Gen Kutu Acheampong when the Electoral Commissioner, Mr Justice Abban, came under intense pressure from the power brokers and had to escape.
He said that, coupled with other pressures that came to bear on subsequent ECs, might have informed the Constituent Assembly to structure the EC in its current form.
Mr Bimi said if the current EC and Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan had not been so insulated by the Constitution, they could not have exhibited the resolve they displayed and Ghana would not have had peaceful elections.
He said Dr Afari-Gyan’s work and pronouncements before the Tain election were what saved the country from a catastrophe because, according to him, until then there was mutual suspicion that the election results were being massaged in favour of one party and if the results had been declared in full then, the reactions would have been uncontrollable.
He said Dr Afari-Gyan was able to manage the situation successfully not only because of his intellectual capacity but also his secured tenure of office.
He recalled that as Chairman of the NCCE, he himself had served two years under former President Rawlings and eight years under former President Kufuor but neither of them ever tried to influence him.
Mr Bimi said that was the beauty of the democracy the country was endeavouring to build.
He said one did not need to be on a job for six years to win public trust and that one could be in a job for a day or a week and still win public trust.
Prof Boafo-Arthur said the four-year term of office had worked very well for the country since democracy was re-introduced in Ghana in 1992 and should be maintained.
He noted that presidents were human beings and fatigue, as well as shortage of ideas, could set in during their tenure and so the four-year, two-term arrangement was enough.
He said Ghana was imitating other democracies, such as that of the US, which also had four-year terms for their presidents and it had worked very well for them, explaining that if Ghana was imitating the US, then there was no need to extend it.
Prof Boafo-Arthur said personally he felt that the four-year, two-term tenure was enough to ensure that no President stayed in office too long to begin to think that the seat was his personal property.
He said once the country’s democracy had been institutionalised, there would be continuity.
He, however, commended former President Kufuor for making those suggestions but said if they were desirable, they should not come from one person.
He said although the proposal was coming from someone who had been the President of the country and served his two terms, with his party losing the 2008 presidential election, it was necessary for it to be looked at from a very dispassionate angle.
On chairmen of the EC, Prof Boafo-Arthur said there might be a reason President Kufuor called for a fixed term of office for them and also be elected by an electoral college.
He said the current Chairman of the EC, Dr Afari-Gyan, was doing his work to the best of his ability.
He said that could be justified from the way he had conducted elections in the country which had seen one government handing over power to the opposition on two occasions.
He said if there was no security and independence of members of the EC, their neutrality would have been compromised by politicians by now.
For his part, Dr Atugubah said one should not be a President if he did not have an agenda.
He said that agenda should be known to Ghanaians and once it was good and followed by a sitting President, he would be successful and his mandate would surely be renewed by the electorate when it ended for him to complete the two terms.
He said it was only when a country had a bad President that he would be voted out of office after his first term and argued that the four-year two-term tenure was enough.
Dr Atugubah noted that if the term office of a President was extended unduly, considering the country’s recent history, one might be inviting other means to change an unpopular government other than constitutional means.
He referred to the US and said the tenure of office of the President there was four years and that it was doing very well.
He said on members of the EC, their independence and security of office were very important for the development of the country’s democracy.
He said electing them and giving them a fixed term of office would only produce a lean commission and commissioners, adding that when that happened, there would always be pressure from the Executive on the EC to toe its line.
A Deputy General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Mr John Nyoagbe, said the extension of the term of the presidency from four to five years was a good idea, reports Emmanuel Bonney from the New Year School.
He said with a five-year renewable term, a new government could use the first year of its administration to settle down and use the rest of the period to do the actual work.
He said most often when a government assumed power, it had little time to settle down and had to rush to do things.
Another officer of GNAT, Mr Jacob Anderson, shared a similar view and was of the belief that with a five-year term a government should be able to deliver on most of its promises.
They both, however, kicked against the former President’s suggestion to have a fixed term of office for the commissioners of the Electoral Commission (EC).
Such an idea, they said, was not good, as it would make the commissioners serve the interests of the governments that appointed them.
Mr Theophilus Kojo Hagan, who described himself as a chief citizen, said the Constituent Assembly that fixed the term for the presidency at four years knew what it was about and, therefore, the four years should be maintained.
“The members of the assembly were intelligent people and had good intentions to make the term for the presidency four years renewable,” he said.
Mr Paul Nyarko, a teacher, also disagreed with the idea of a five-year term, adding that “some politicians can take advantage of the situation to amass wealth at the expense of the poor”.
He said the four-year renewable term should be maintained so that politicians would not become power drunk.
For Mr Raymond Ayroe, a retired teacher, the four-year term was good, as it would put politicians on their toes to start delivering as soon as they assumed office so that they could get another mandate from the people.
Mr Mahama Ayariga, the Spokesperson for President John Evans Atta Mills, for his part, said although the NDC administration had a different view of the constitutional reviews suggested by former President Kufuor, it would not dismiss them outright, reports Donald Ato Dapatem.
He said President Kufuor made those suggestions from his observations and experience gathered over the years as President for eight years and 40 years of active political life, as well as an elderly statesman, adding that suggestions from such a personality should not be dismissed entirely.
Mr Ayariga said Prof Mills campaigned on the basis of winning power and fulfilling the promises made within the four-year mandate prescribed by the Constitution and so based on those promises and the constitutional arrangements the NDC would not hesitate to make any such review.
However, he said as was promised during the NDC campaign, the Mills government would institute measures for some constitutional reviews during the early stages of its term and that during discussions if the NPP found it feasible to raise such issues, in addition to what the NDC would bring up,, they would be welcomed.
According to Mr Ayariga, there was nothing wrong with the members of the EC that warranted a specific tenure of office for them.
He argued that the issue with the electoral process was purely acts of lawlessness on the part of some electorate and candidates, which had nothing to do with the behaviour and tenure of any of the EC members.
He said some of the problems associated with election malpractice include under-age voting, double registration, double voting, as well as chaotic behaviour at the polling stations.
He said all those acts were criminal offences which EC officials had little authority to stop.
He said it was the security agencies that had the power and authority to cause arrests in such instances because they were criminal offences.