The Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Sulemana Braimah, has expressed cautious optimism about the government’s renewed efforts to advance Ghana’s constitutional reform agenda, saying the latest initiative presents an opportunity to address longstanding governance challenges.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, Mr Braimah welcomed the inauguration of an 11-member committee tasked with taking forward recommendations from the Constitution Review Committee.

His comments come as Ghana’s constitutional review process enters a new phase, shifting attention from the production of recommendations towards the more difficult task of implementing proposed reforms.

Mr Braimah said the initiative was particularly important because President John Dramani Mahama had made a commitment to pursuing a comprehensive constitutional reform process.

“Under this regime, I think one of the promises that has been made by President Mahama has been that he wants to oversee a very comprehensive constitutional process,” he said.

According to the MFWA Executive Director, such a process should provide an opportunity to examine provisions of the Constitution that have contributed to challenges within Ghana’s system of governance and determine how those concerns can be addressed.

He said the ultimate objective should be to deal with issues arising from constitutional provisions that stakeholders believe require review.

“He wants to ensure that some of the government issues that emanate from certain provisions that we think need to be reviewed are dealt with,” Mr Braimah said.

Despite welcoming the government’s latest move, Mr Braimah’s comments carried an element of caution, reflecting the long and sometimes difficult history of constitutional reform efforts in Ghana.

He expressed hope that the current process would not suffer the fate of previous initiatives, where extensive consultations and recommendations did not necessarily translate into comprehensive reforms.

“So I can only hope that this time round we would get the process through,” he said.

His remarks underline the significance of the implementation phase. The production of recommendations represents only one part of constitutional reform; translating those recommendations into legislation, constitutional amendments and changes to governance arrangements is often considerably more challenging.

The establishment of the 11-member committee is therefore expected to be an important test of the government’s determination to move the process forward.

Mr Braimah also expressed confidence in the composition of the committee established to work on the implementation of the recommendations.

“I am happy with the team that has been put together,” he said.