Chairman of the Constitution Review Committee, Prof H. Kwasi Prempeh, has defended calls for broader public deliberation on Ghana’s constitutional review process, insisting that while it may slow the timetable, democracy and constitution-making are not designed to be fast.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express on Monday, Prof Prempeh said the country must resist the temptation to rush reforms that will shape Ghana’s governance for generations.

He stressed that constitutions are fundamentally different from ordinary politics because they are designed to outlive governments, political parties and individual leaders.

“Constitutions are different; they are forward-looking. They last at least a generation. They set the foundational rules of the game for how the country is to be governed, how we recruit our national political leadership, how we exit them, how we distribute power, and these things transcend party governments.”

Prof Prempeh said he hopes the political class, which he described as the gatekeepers of the review process, will approach the exercise with patriotism rather than partisan interests.

“They will come to this with a certain sense of patriotic obligation, not deference to party, because this is going to last beyond any party’s tenure, any president’s tenure.”

He urged political leaders to think beyond their time in office and consider the kind of country future generations would inherit.

“If you see it as just a zero-sum game of another way for one incumbent party to get their preferences vis-à-vis the rival party, then I think we have lost an opportunity to do some real game-changing reforms.”

While acknowledging that politics cannot be separated entirely from the constitutional review process, Prof Prempeh argued that extensive debate and public participation are essential to producing legitimate reforms.

“Rather than rush things and go quickly to cast a vote, let us debate and argue it, and let the public be part of that debate, and let us see who has the superior arguments, because we are reforming our state, the republic, and how it’s governed.”

He admitted that the review process has already lost valuable time.

“I think we’ve lost time.”

Looking back, he said he would have preferred the government’s position on constitutional reforms to have been submitted directly to the Constitution Review Committee alongside proposals from other stakeholders.

“That would have saved us the wait period because we’ve waited quite a bit from the end of January to now… we’ve lost quite a bit of time.”

Although he understands the desire to align a possible referendum with the next local government elections to improve voter turnout, he insisted that the remaining time should be used to maximise public deliberation rather than accelerate the process.

When asked whether that approach would cause further delays, Prof Prempeh replied that such trade-offs are unavoidable in democratic constitution-making.

“That’s what makes constitutions and constitution-making and democracy slower than the alternative. You slow it so that you hopefully improve the outcome, the legitimacy of the outcome.”

“So yes, there is some trade-off that needs to be done. It will push it a little bit.”