"I have no hand in Transitional Provisions" - Asante

Dr S. K. B. Asante, Chairman of the Committee of Experts, who drafted the 1992 Constitution, on Monday declared unequivocally that he had no role in the drafting of the Transitional Provisions of the Constitution.

"I actually returned to my post at the United Nations before the drafting of the Transitional Provisions and that my committee does not claim authorship of all provisions of the Constitution," he said.

Dr Asante, who is also the Vice President of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, said this at the first of a series of three lectures of the 35th J. B. Danquah Memorial Lectures in Accra. The series is under the theme: "Reflections of the Constitution, Law and Development". The lectures commemorate the outstanding contributions of Dr J. B. Danquah to the political, social and economic development and independence of the country.

The constitutional expert, who has been occasionally criticised for some provisions of the Constitution, especially the Transitional Provisions, explained that the authorship of the 1992 Constitution was a complex phenomenon.

It encompassed the legacies, contributions and inputs of many people including authorities and persons other than those formally charged with the formulation of the current document, Dr Asante said, adding that the Consultative Assembly did not endorse all the recommendations of the Committee of Experts.

Dr Asante explained that the criteria for evaluating the executive arrangements under the Constitution must necessarily be informed by lessons of Africa's experience of governance in the post-independence era and the dismal record of executive excesses and its destabilising and stifling impact.

Citing recent incidents of state collapse or disintegration of authority in several African countries to support the argument, Dr Asante said these demonstrated the critical importance of devising structures that would ensure the effectiveness of the state machinery and the presence of national authority throughout the body politics.

Dr Asante emphasised that the efficacy of statehood or national authority must be strictly distinguished from authoritarianism, which according to him, connoted abuse of executive powers.

He also noted that the Constitution did not impose any impediments on the effective exercise of executive power at the national, regional or district levels. "Executive power is fully complemented by a national judicial system which operates in all regions and districts." Dr Asante explained that the occasional lapses in the maintenance of law and order were not traceable to any inherent deficiencies of the Constitution.