CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BEING USED AS COVERT PROPAGANDA INSTRUMENT AGAINST COUNCIL OF STATE
THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW PROCESS IS BEING USED AS A COVERT INSTRUMENT OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE COUNCIL OF STATE.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
The Chairman of the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC), Henry Kwasi Prempeh, appointed by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Government to make proposals for a review of the 1992 Constitution, has begun to condition the minds of Ghanaians about an impending reform of the Council of State in the eventual report of the CRC. Mr. Kwasi Prempeh’s personal agenda for the Council of State which he covertly posits as that of the CRC is captured and summarized in the following quoted reportage of his words by Joy FM on 3 May 2025: ‘“Our task is not just to listen to what is broken,” Prof. Prempeh said, “but to ask how we can make things work better. So rather than taking a binary position of abolish or retain, I’m more interested in a middle ground: retain, but modify.”’
Mr. Kwasi Prempeh is purposefully setting himself and the CRC (should the other more senior and more qualified professional constitutional law court room practitioners and retired supreme court justices experienced in constitutional adjudication on the committee lend themselves) to his agenda of proposing to reform the Council of State by amending the unentrenched provisions of Chapter 9 of the Constitution with the concomitant consequence of a further amendment to some of the entrenched provisions of Chapter 8 of the Constitution after a national referendum. Henry Kwasi Prempeh, a former public office holder under the Akufo-Addo Government dressed in the apparel of the Executive Director of the ideologically infused or saturated Centre for Democratic Development-Ghana (CDD-Ghana) established to undermine the PNDC and the NDC will lead John Dramani Mahama to his waterloo in any national referendum on his eventual CRC report on this subject.
On 30 April 2025, CitiNewsroom.com reported interventions made by Mr. Kwasi Prempeh at an event organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) on the constitutional review which in my considered view constituted a covert attempt to prepare the minds of citizens for what to expect in the report of the CRC on the Council of State. Mr. Prempeh was quoted to have attributed to unnamed sources that:
“There is the view that if we must have a Council of State, then it must at least be in a position to resolve very high-level issues when it comes to peace and conflict resolution. There is a search for a better purpose for the Council of State.”
The first sentence in the quoted words above appear to be the views of the unnamed significant others whilst the second sentence is Mr. Prempeh’s own views, in my understanding.
The reportage continues thus: “Prof. Henry Kwasi Prempeh, has stated that a significant number of citizens are calling for the abolition of the Council of State.” Mr. Prempeh is then quoted again to have said, inter alia, that:
“If we were to reconstitute it in terms of membership, how would we go about it? The sense that it is dominated by handpicked presidential appointees means it doesn’t make a difference. The President already has his own council, his Cabinet, so there is no point in paying attention to the Council of State”
The forum which facilitated the discourse at which Mr. Prempeh delivered his views is an important context for understanding his political agenda for any person associated with the political history of this country and lived through the transition to constitutional rule from the PNDC regime. The origins, history, and style of advocacy of the IEA and the CDD-Ghana have never been those of politically and ideologically neutral NGOs or civil society organizations intent on objective discourse for national development. These are comprador NGOs working with other comprador Ghanaian political elites for political power to serve the interest of their financiers – the neocolonial foreign masters within the international geopolitical struggle for territory and exploitative dominance in the developing and under developed world.
On 3 May 2025, Joy FM reported Mr. Prempeh in a manner suggesting the continuation of his advocacy for reforming the Council of State under the smokescreen of views calling for its abolition and thereby preparing the minds of citizens for impending amendments to the unentrenched Chapter 9 of the Constitution dealing with the Council of State and possibly to amend portions of the entrenched Chapter 8 of the Constitution dealing with the Executive Authority of Ghana. Mr. Prempeh is quoted to have said this time that:
"The posture that I have taken is that it is not sufficient to call for the abolition of an existing structure in the Constitution if the call for abolition is predicated largely or solely on the fact that it is not working as structured"
Kwasi Prempeh either does not know or is playing games with the public mind when he creates the impression that its is possible to abolish the Council of State without further amendments to other entrenched provisions of the 1992 Constitution which the NDC cannot win at any future referendum with grave consequences for their ambition for the 2028 elections.
Be that as it may, Mr. Prempeh’s understanding of the 1992 Constitution and the experience upon which he advocates for his reform agenda of the Council of State as reported by Joy FM were paraphrased as suggestions as follows:
“He suggested that the Council’s lack of impact may be due to structural flaws such as opaque operations, excessive presidential influence through appointments, and non-binding advisory powers. Instead of doing away with the Council entirely, he proposed reviewing its composition, making its operations more transparent, and strengthening its role by making its advice binding in certain areas.”
Firstly, the paradox, hypocrisy, and lack of narrative coherence in the suggestions attributed to Kwasi Prempeh by the Joy FM report of 3 May 2025 is the fact that Kwasi Prempeh accepted without demurrer his “handpicked” appointment and served for almost eight years as a member of the Law Reform Commission after President Akufo-Addo had consulted the Council of State despite the perception that Council of State was a mere sounding board for decisions already taken by the handpicking President. The CDD-Ghana which he leads was part of the kitchen cabinet of President Akufo-Addo’s government as I have contended in earlier articles I published in the media and available on my website.
The IEA, which gestated the CDD-Ghana, from which he spoke on 30 April 2025 also benefitted from a critical appointment to public office by President Nana Akufo-Addo to the Electoral Commission in circumstances facilitated by the CDD-Ghana that I discussed in my 18th Harmattan School 2024 lecture on 8 February 2024 at the University for Development Studies (UDS), Tamale. But after John Dramani Mahama’s NDC assumed power on 7 January 2025 from Akufo-Addo’s NPP which openly and knowingly raped the Constitution without protest, Kwasi Prempeh now sees his suggestions as endemic sins of the Council of State. This is what is called, double speak!
Secondly, the suggestions by Kwasi Prempeh reported by Joy FM under discussion shows that Mr. Prempeh is one of the ideological constitutional law advocates who pretend deceptively that the Constitutional document is self-executing instead of containing norms and rules which depend on the integrity of human actors within the particular cultural and political societies for its interpretation, operationalization, and defence to achieve the dictates of its letter and spirit. He overlooks the fact that opaque operations, excessive presidential influence, alleged non-binding advisory powers are not flaws within the design, scheme and structure, of the 1992 Constitution but those of the human actors who have failed or refused to uphold the oath of office enjoined upon them by the Constitutional document at various periods of the lived history of the Constitution.
The Council of State established under Chapter 9 of the 1992 Constitution with powers and functions spreading across other Chapters (Chapters 8 and 10 for example) of the Constitution was intended by the framers of the 1992 Constitution within its structure and scheme to be constrained by the oath of office of members of the Council of State. Indeed the framers of the Constitution intended that all public office holders would uphold their oath of office and act with honour and integrity in operationalizing the constitutional document, which is not self-executing and enforcing, but mere words on paper making up that document which depends solely on human actors and agency for its viability as a national social compact of governance.
The framers of the Constitution intended that the citizens of Ghana would defend it when its provisions are being violated by public office holders including members of institutions established to ensure the integrity of the Constitution. The problem, therefore, is not with the Constitution or the Council of State. The problem is with We the People, particularly the educated and enlightened political elite and middle class upon whom the struggling citizen relies on to defend the Constitution and thereby their social, political, economic, and other interests as equal citizens under the law. Unfortunately, for reasons of personal economic and status benefits the political elite is so polarized that they find their voices only when they cannot eat at the trough of the political party and government in power. Patriotism has been reduced to partisan politics and using subterfuges to ensure the maintenance of personal economic and political interest with the government in power.
The framers of the 1992 Constitution created the Council of State as an advisory and consultative organ of government to moderate excesses within the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. They intended and assumed that the persons occupying positions, statuses, and playing roles to operationalize the Council of State will live up to the highest standards of integrity and fidelity to the Republic of Ghana and the Constitution. The letter and the spirit of the 1992 Constitution makes the foregoing abundantly clear beyond argument.
Those of us who were members of the Consultative Assembly, 1991 which wrote the 1992 Constitution know the efforts and energy expended to provide for the Council of State as an arbiter between the executive, legislative, and the judicial arms of government. The independence of the judiciary was also strengthened under Chapter 11 of the Constitution, particularly the entrenched Articles 125, 127, 129, 145 and 146 thereof. But when the human actors appointed to hold positions, statuses, and play roles in the operationalization of the Constitution decide to disregard their constitutional oaths and moral conscience of integrity for personal enrichments one cannot blame the constitutional document for ineffectiveness.
The timing of the IEA facilitation process for the constitutional review process and the intervention of the Chairman of the CRC, Mr. Kwasi Prempeh, who is also the Executive Director of the CDD-Ghana who held public office in the Akufo-Addo government when the Council of State has come under partisan criticism within the past two months in the execution of its mandate under Article 146(6) of the Constitution for the removal of Chief Justices gives one the impression that the IEA forum is being used for ideological partisan politics once again.
As the Deputy Attorney-General of Ghana when the IEA was established in 1989 I knew that its purpose was to facilitate the demise of the PNDC and later the NDC governments. The CDD-Ghana emerged in 1998 when I was still Deputy Attorney-General out of the IEA with the assistance of the political officer at United States Embassy who had facilitated the establishment of CDD or CDD-West Africa in 1997 (now CDD-Nigeria) during her tenure in Nigeria. They have a clear geopolitical agenda under the cover of NGOs and that is the context in which the timing, forum, and statements coming from them must be appreciated. Did the inadequacies of the Council of State show only after 7 January 2025? While members from the IEA and CDD-Ghana held public office under the Akufo-Addo regime there was nothing wrong with the Council of State chaired for eight years by a paramount chief who was also the Chairman of the Business Committee of the Consultative Assembly, 1991.
The NDC has chosen to utilize the four year term of President John Dramani Mahama to sup with the devil by appointing Henry Kwasi Prempeh of the CDD-Ghana to chair its CRC. I only pray that the NDC has a long spoon. When I read the names of the eminent persons attacking the Council of State and making proposals for Constitutional amendments at the IEA I saw no difference in how the IEA and later the CDD-Ghana were used as instruments of propaganda against the PNDC, NDC 1, and NDC 2 that resulted in the NDC loosing the 2000, and 2004 Presidential elections. As the 2028 elections beckons one should remember that history may not repeat itself but it rhymes. The NDC will be doing itself the utmost good should it remember the idiom, “a leopard never changes its spots”. The saying that “a stitch in time saves nine” may also be a further good guide to President Mahama and his NDC. The Akans say: “ Aboa bi beka wo a, na ofiiri wo ntoma mu” – if an insect bites you it would already have been lodged in within your clothes. A word to the wise is in the north!
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
5 May 2025.