Ghanaians urged to respect and protect the Constitution

Tamale, Nov. 2, GNA - Alhaji Mustapha Ali Idris, Northern Regional Minister, on Thursday stressed the need for Ghanaians to protect the 1992 Constitution at all times to ensure a stable democracy. He said Ghanaians should not hesitate to rise up and resist any attempt to destabilize or subvert the current prevailing peace in the country.

Alhaji Idris made the call at the National Governance Forum on the Constitution in Tamale on Thursday.

The forum sought to concretize the debate about the impact, structure and content of the Constitution in the country's democratic dispensation and to see how best civil society groups understood it. Some 200 participants, including chiefs, civil society groups, security agencies and members of the public from the Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions attended the one-day forum. It was on the theme: "We the people of Ghana: Understanding and Living the Constitution at the dawn of 50".

The United Nation's Development Programme (UNDP) sponsored the forum, which also meant to help synthesis opinion on certain aspects of the Constitution that were most subject to diverse public perception. Alhaji Idris said the Constitution of Ghana was a sacrosanct document, which entailed a national duty to protect it at all times to sustain the prevailing peace in the country.

He said understanding the Constitution, analyzing and explaining it, cleaning it and making it a perfect legal document is a step in the right direction and needed to be protected at all times. Mrs Leonora Kyeremanten, Coordinator of the National Governance Programme, stressed the importance of the forum and indicated that the Constitution had undergone some modifications and that those changes were fairly mundane.

She said it was important for civil society groups who articulate various concerns on the Constitution to be given a chance to enter the formal policy dialogue process to ensure that it was well understood. Mrs Kyeremanten said her outfit would continue to concretize the ongoing debate on the impact of structures and content of the Constitution as a living document, particularly on issues of democracy, participation and inclusiveness, separation of powers, accountability, poverty reduction and sustainable human development.

She commended the UNDP for contributing towards the understanding and sustenance of the Constitution through adequate funding. Prof. Nii Ashie Kotey, Dean, the faculty of law at the University of Ghana called for the reintroduction of Civic Education into the educational curriculum to ensure that the Constitution and other important national issues would be constantly explained to school children. 02 Nov. 06