Media urged to give fair reportage on constitutional review meetings

Koforidua, May 5, GNA - Mr Samuel Fleischer-Kwabi, District Chief Executive (DCE) of Suhum Kraboa Coaltar, has called on the media to give concise, credible and fair reportage of views of people on the constitutional review.

He said the success or failure of the exercise was pivoted around the media. Mr Fleischer-Kwabi was speaking at the community and district level consultation on the constitutional review process organized by the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) in collaboration with the District Assembly at Suhum on Wednesday. He observed that the constitution was a living document and in view of that, it needed to be reviewed periodically to know its strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Mr Fleischer-Kwabi said the review exercise was a period of critical analysis of the past that would give an insight into the future as a nation. He noted that to make democracy participatory and more decentralized, government had decided to hold public forums to create a platform for people to express their opinions on the constitution. The DCE urged all to feel relaxed and comfortable to contribute their individual and collective quotas to the exercise. Professor Albert Fiadjoe, Chairman of the CRC, in a speech read for him, observed that the review of the constitution represented nothing more than a good housekeeping for the nation and an attempt by the people to fashion out the home-grown solutions to governance problems. He said the process for the current review of the 1992 constitution started with the promulgation of the CRC of Enquiry Instrument, 2010 (C.I. 64) and the subsequent inauguration of the commission on January 11, this year.

Professor Fiadjoe said the submissions on the review process could be made in written or orally and all interested persons would have to choose the medium by which they wished to express their views. He noted that anybody at the district and community level could make a submission to the commission through their chiefs, assembly members, National Commission on Civic Education and district assembly offices. Professor Fiadjoe called on all who had relatives abroad to ask them to participate in the process by submitting their views through the commissions e-mail address or through any of Ghana's foreign missions.