On the 22nd of December 2025, the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) chaired by Prof. H.K. Prempeh presented its final work to H.E. John Dramani Mahama. On the 30th of July 2026, the Attorney-General, Dr. Dominic Ayine, presented the Government’s Position Paper on that work. Dr. Ayine described Prof. Prempeh’s work as “an excellent job” and announced that the Government accepts the recommendations some of which he highlighted for example, the change of the presidential term of office from 4 years to 5 years. I read both the CRC report and the government’s white paper, not through a political lens, not to find fault, but as an intellectual and a concerned citizen who is highly interested in good governance after I have spent 2.5 years in solitude in the past to do the same work that the committee did through which I published a book in the year 2020 called “The New Dawn: Redefining Governance, a proposed new constitution for Ghana”
I agree that the 1992 Constitution has outlived its usefulness, and that a constitutional review is not only necessary but overdue. But after painstakingly reading the work of the CRC led by Prof. Prempeh, page by page, clause by clause, reason by reason and I can say unequivocally that the Committee’s work was poorly executed, and the Government’s acceptance of it was poorly reasoned. If these recommendations are adopted in a referendum, Ghana will in no time need another constitutional review. Not because the 1992 Constitution was perfect, but because this review has failed to close the loopholes that have bled this country for 34 years. Instead, it has introduced new clauses and loopholes that will worsen the very bad governance we are already experiencing. I have also read the White Paper issued by the Government on constitutional review during the tenure of the late former President Atta-Mills. In reasoning, in depth, and in fidelity to constitutional principles, that White Paper was even superior to this latest Position Paper.
On any objective scale, the highest I can rate the current CRC work is 3 out of 10. We do not need to spend scarce national resources every 10 years on constitutional reviews. We can do it once, and do it properly, in a futuristic way that outlives generations.
The Attorney-General, Dr. Ayine, says the Government has accepted the CRC’s recommendation to change the President’s tenure from four years to five years. With respect, the reasoning is very poor and it collapses against the evidence on the ground. You do not cure an alcoholic by giving him a bigger bottle. When the CRC says 4 years is too short and we must give the President 5 years, I ask a simple question: If you hire a man and he performs poorly in four days, do you add a fifth day to justify his poor performance, or do you sack him on the fifth day? A second term is a reward for a good first term. Increasing the years from 4 years to 5 years does not solve the underlying incompetence; it only gives incompetence more time to do more damage. This is not an opinion, it’s a fact backed by data of the kind of leadership that is delivered in Ghana. It is data from the Bank of Ghana and the IMF.
President Kufuor met debt above 120% before HIPC relief and, through hard work, brought it to about 36% by 2007. From 2007 to 2008 alone, just one year before the election year, the deficit hit 11.5% of GDP. That one year wiped out the seven years of gains. Presidents Mills and Mahama met debt at 36% in 2009 and left at 73% in 2016, adding 37 percentage points in eight years, with the heaviest borrowing in Years 3 and 4. President Akufo-Addo met debt at 73% and by 2022 left us at 93.5% and back at the IMF, adding over 20 percentage points in just six years.
The pattern is clear, every government since 2000 leaves with 20 to 37 percent more debt than it inherited, and most of that damage is done in the 3rd and 4th year, because the looting is backloaded, when contracts must be paid and elections must be funded, so just imagine adding one more year. And yet the CRC looked at this history of last-minute profligacy and said, “Let us add Year 5.” That is not reform. That is negligence. Even the President of the United States, who manages the world’s largest economy, the world’s strongest military, and 340 million people, has only four years. If four years is enough for America to lead the world, why is it too short for Ghana to manage itself? That 5-year presidential term recommendation, was not proposed due to any deep reasoning by the CRC, it was directly listed from the constitutions of Kenya and Nigeria, but in any case whats the quality of governance in Kenya and Nigeria themselves that have a 5-year presidential term? If there will be a referendum, I encourage all Ghanaians to vote against a 5-year presidential term, that’s not the solution, the problem is that, we have the wrong people who are elected as president due to popularity, and party machinery, not necessarily because of their competence and intellectual depth.
The CRC recommends, and the Government accepts: President five years, Parliament for five years, and they are elected on the same day. On paper it looks efficient. In practice, it creates a governance blackout. Imagine January 7, 2028. A new President walks into Parliament. Who meets him? 275 brand new MPs who do not know where the contracts are buried. And who audits the old President leaving on January 6? The same 275 MPs who are packing their bags to go home. No memory. No continuity. National amnesia every five years. This begs a simple question: How can an MP scrutinize an exiting President if that MP is himself exiting on the same day? Oversight dies when the auditor and the audited leave together. The framers of the United States Constitution understood this. That is why the American President has only four years, but a Senator has six years and a Congressman has two. At no point in American history does 100% of government turn over in one day. There is always an old Senate to receive a new President, and always an old Senate to hold an old President to account. Parliament is not a classroom of freshers. It is an oversight body. Staggering is wisdom. Aligning is ignorance. And to make matters worse, the CRC proposes this blackout while keeping MPs’ term of office unlimited, that’s what creates the demi-gods we have now. In Ghana today, we have MPs who have been in Parliament longer than four Presidents combined, doing nothing but winning primaries. A man can approve 20 years of bad loans as an MP and then become Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee to audit the same loans he approved. What kind of accountability is that?
The CRC proposes banning MPs from being Ministers. That is not a solution. That is theatre.A 30-year MP is more imperial than a four-year Minister. You did not kill the demi-god. You only moved him from Cabinet to the Committee room. You gave him a new office with the same impunity.The real solution is not where the MP sits. It is how long he sits. Give MPs a term limit. A maximum of two terms. If their tenure is even six years like the U.S. Senate, it does not matter. What matters is that after two terms, the person must exit.The CRC’s greatest failure follows the same logic. It recommends elected MMDCEs but with no term limits, just as the 2010 report left their tenure to Parliament to decide. You cannot cure winner-takes-all by creating 261 new winners who never leave.The solution to all of this is true commitment to expiry dates: President, four years, renewable once. MP, perhaps six years, renewable once, then out forever. Whether you are popular or not. Whether you are the best debater or not. Your time expires.When an MP knows he has only two terms, and those terms are not tied to the President’s term, he will not mortgage his future to please a President. He will work for Ghana. That is how it ought to be. Look at what is happening today. Since President Mahama came to office, the majority of NDC MPs have used his picture as their profile picture, doing everything possible to be noticed by him so they can get an appointment. Let us be honest: How can a person who is seeking favour from someone be able to scrutinize the same person?
Because of space, I will end here. Otherwise, I would have discussed it line by line, clause by clause, to show why the CRC’s work is poorly done.Their remedy does not match their diagnosis. The CRC diagnosed an imperial presidency, winner-takes-all politics, and a weak Parliament. Yet its remedy is to give the same imperial President ten years instead of eight, to entrench winner-takes-all, and to keep Parliament weak. It does not make any logical sense. There are many other proposals by the CRC that are ambiguous, especially those concerning political parties and independent candidates, which will create a lot of litigation and problems in the future if adopted. In a nutshell, it is a poor job. I even rate President Atta-Mills’ White Paper on the constitutional review far better than this one. What we need is a comprehensive constitution that closes all the loopholes once and for all, not one that introduces more loopholes. In between, I have observed that some people are using the media to manipulate the populace about a possible President Mahama’s third term, which is not going to happen. In the 2024 election, there were 18.7 million registered voters, approximately 6.6 million voted for President Mahama, which is only 35% of the total registered voters, so, it would be a miscalculation to believe that Ghanaians are going to buy into that.
Written By: Ing. Richard Mawuli Amegatse.
Presidential Aspirant, 2028.