Former Professor of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister K.A. Busia’s administration, Dr Assibi O. Abudu has posited that the current 1992 Constitution of Ghana is not good for the country.
In his view, it must be amended to suit the exigencies of the current times.
“My feeling is that we need to change the constitution because in the constitution we can include certain factors in there which limit certain kinds of decisions that can affect the whole country. Because the constitution is just a bunch of rules on how we should conduct ourselves in the country”, he said in an exclusive interview with 3news.com.
He described the Constitution as a “Coup d’etat within a coup d’etat” , which according to him, allowed the late former President Jerry John Rawlings to “change from military uniform to civilian clothing as a dictator”.
Dr Abudu, a prolific writer and the author of the ‘prophetic’ book “Fixing Ghana: Removing Brakes To Progress” pointed out that since politicians are only after power and not progress, they will not change the constitution because it serves their agenda of impoverishing the country.
He cited the example of the German constitution, which he said has inculcated a provision in it to prevent inflation because they once suffered a terrible inflation in the past.
He was commenting on the back of recent topical issues like judgement debts and the power of the executive to take certain unilateral decisions devoid of public consensus and also the abuse of the power of incumbency in the politics of Ghana.
“So if we know that there has been a lot of misbehavior, a lot of criminal loopholes we can include that in the constitution, why not? The current constitution is not good for us at all, we can never make any progress with this constitution. We can never even get an Nkrumah out of this country with this constitution, the reason why I say so, you see this constitution that we have, I say that it is a coup d’etat within a coup d’etat, it just allowed Rawlings to change from military uniform to civilian clothing as a dictator.
“And of course if a government comes and because always government wants power so if they give them power they are not willing to change anything. So these are my feelings, as I say in my book, especially the revised version of ‘Fixing Ghana: Removing Brakes To Progress’”, he charged in an exclusive with
