The government’s position on constitutional review reads, at first, like a hymn to caution. It is sober, procedural, studiously respectful of the supremacy of the 1992 Constitution. It praises continuity, invokes prior commissions, and promises that every recommendation has been carefully weighed against the existing text and the accumulated wisdom of past reforms. Between the lines, however, a quieter declaration emerges: we are broadly content with the way things are.
The Constitution Review Committee did not set out to vandalise the Fourth Republic. Its report is not a manifesto for revolution; it is a catalogue of problems that have become visible after three decades of practice. The Committee’s thesis is simple: Ghana’s constitutional framework has succeeded in sustaining electoral democracy, but has not yet produced a governance architecture equal to the country’s aspirations. It adopts a problem-solving method—identify a governance failure, trace it to constitutional design, propose a targeted amendment—and in doing so it makes a subtle but important claim. If the system keeps producing the same distortions, the problem is not only who sits in office; it is what the office itself allows.
The government’s response, by contrast, turns repeatedly to a familiar refuge: existing law.
There is a particular Ghanaian talent for confusing the formalisation of a problem with its solution. Rename a committee, upgrade a statute, issue a set of guidelines, and there is an invitation to believe that the underlying imbalance has shifted. The position paper leans into this reflex. For recommendation after recommendation, the refrain is that the objective can be “achieved through ordinary legislation or administrative action” and that constitutional amendment is therefore unnecessary. Where the CRC speaks of structural incentives—how power is allocated, how appointments are made, how money flows and is supervised—the government replies with procedure and policy, pointing to mechanisms that already exist in theory.
It is, in effect, an argument that the system is fine; only its users are flawed.
This posture runs through the paper’s treatment of the presidency, parliament, the judiciary, the appointments process, public financial management, and decentralisation. The CRC identifies, for example, the concentration of appointment power in the presidency and the way this shapes the independence of key offices and institutions. The government’s instinct is not to ask whether this concentration has produced a culture of politicised appointments, but to note that the Constitution already provides for consultation, for advisory bodies, for statutory checks. The answer to a problem rooted in design is, once again, that there are rules on the books.
A similar pattern appears in the sections on parliament. The CRC is concerned with parliamentary independence, the ability of the legislature to resist executive pressure, the cost of politics, and the structural incentives that make crossing the aisle not an act of conscience but a calculation of survival. The government responds with assurances about standing orders, budgetary provisions, and administrative measures that can, in its view, handle the problem without touching the constitutional text. The architecture remains intact; only the furniture is rearranged.
The judiciary, too, is treated as an institution whose vulnerabilities can be managed by better administration rather than deeper structural reform. The Committee’s focus on appointments, tenure, and the composition of the Supreme Court is met with an emphasis on existing constitutional procedures and the possibility of refining them through ordinary law. The idea that constitutional design itself might be producing a judiciary that is formally independent but substantively dependent—on appointments, on budgets, on relationships—is never taken quite as seriously as the need to protect the sanctity of the existing language.
If there is one place where the government shows enthusiasm for change, it is in areas that carry international resonance: human rights enhancements, modernising certain protections, rethinking the death penalty. Even here, the instinct is to avoid constitutional entrenchment. The paper proposes a comprehensive Human Rights Act under existing constitutional provisions, effectively moving the reform into statute rather than into the fundamental law. The spirit is accepted; the structure is left untouched.
The result is a kind of constitutional minimalism dressed up as prudence. The government insists that amendments must be approached with caution, that the normative significance of changes should be high, that the Constitution must not be cluttered with matters that could be handled by ordinary law. These are, in the abstract, defensible principles. But they are being applied to a context in which ordinary law and administrative discretion have, for decades, failed to resolve the very problems the CRC was asked to address.
To say, in 2026, that the existing legal framework is enough is to express satisfaction with the current balance of power between the executive and the legislature; with the way judges are appointed and removed; with the architecture of anti-corruption enforcement; with the relationship between central government and local authorities; with the way public money is authorised, spent, and accounted for. It is to look at the lived experience of citizens—at the recurring controversies, the unanswered reports, the stalled reforms, the politicised institutions—and to insist that the design does not need to change, only the behaviour of those who inhabit it.
We are not satisfied.
That, ultimately, is what lies behind the call to reject the government’s position paper. The document reads as though the Constitution were a delicate heirloom, to be dusted but not repaired. The CRC’s work, by contrast, treats the Constitution as a tool that must be sharpened if it is to keep doing its job. Where the Committee sees a pattern—executive dominance, parliamentary subordination, a judiciary whose independence is formal rather than functional, an anti-corruption architecture that cannot bite—the government sees only isolated failures that can be managed by better compliance with laws that already exist.
The difference is more than philosophical. A constitution is where a society chooses to limit power in ways that cannot easily be undone by the next government or the next ministerial directive. When a government insists that everything can be handled through statute and administration, it is asking citizens to trust that future officeholders will voluntarily restrain themselves. The CRC’s recommendations, in many of their most important parts, are about removing that need for trust—about building constraints into the system so that no single government can decide, on a whim, that certain checks do not apply.
By clinging to the old architecture and delegating reform to ordinary law, the government is signalling that it does not wish to bind itself or its successors too tightly. It prefers to keep power in the realm of discretion. Those who live under that discretion, and who have watched successive governments promise change while relying on the same constitutional levers, have reason to ask for more than reassurances that there are “laws that already cater” for their concerns.
Rejecting the government’s position paper is, therefore, not a rejection of constitutional caution. It is a rejection of constitutional complacency. It is a way of saying that the status quo—in governance, in appointments, in the workings of the judiciary, in economic management—is not working well enough to deserve preservation. If the government believes that existing laws are adequate, it will need to explain why those laws have not yet produced the outcomes the Constitution promises. And if it cannot, then it must be prepared to accept reforms even when they touch nerves, redistribute power, or disturb arrangements that have grown comfortable.
The Constitution Review Committee has already done the hard work of diagnosis. The government has responded with a document that mostly defends the patient’s current regimen. Those of us who live with the symptoms are entitled to a second opinion.
OUR FORMAL RESPONSE
The government’s position paper on constitutional reform should be rejected because it largely treats the Constitution as already sufficient and relies on laws and administrative measures that have demonstrably failed to deliver accountable, equitable governance.
The core problem
The position paper is explicit about its methodology: every recommendation of the Constitution Review Committee (CRC) is tested first against the existing 1992 Constitution, prior reform efforts, and current legal and administrative mechanisms. Where the government believes that ordinary legislation or administrative action could, in theory, address the issue, it prefers to leave the Constitution untouched. It also states that it will not accept proposals that create new constitutional chapters or bodies unless the “normative justification” is deemed compelling by the government itself.
In abstract terms, this sounds cautious and responsible; in practice, it functions as a doctrine of satisfaction with the status quo. If the test is always “can this be done under current law?”, then the failures of current law and practice are treated as irrelevant. The central question—“have existing laws and institutions delivered on their constitutional promises?”—is quietly set aside.
A pattern of saying “we already have laws”
Throughout the paper, the government’s responses follow a recurring pattern: acknowledge the CRC’s diagnosis of a governance problem, then insist that the issue can be addressed by existing statutes, administrative discretion, or policy guidelines, rather than through constitutional reform. This pattern emerges across key areas—presidential appointments, parliamentary independence, judicial appointments and tenure, anti-corruption architecture, public financial management, and decentralisation.
The government explicitly states that where the “normative significance” of a proposed amendment is not considered high, or where objectives “can be achieved through ordinary legislation or administrative action,” it favours the statutory route. Yet many of the problems the CRC identifies—concentration of executive power, politicisation of appointments, weak checks on public finance, and structural barriers to accountability—have persisted under precisely those existing laws and administrative arrangements.
By repeatedly saying “this can be done without constitutional amendment,” the government is effectively saying “we are content with the current architecture; the problem is only one of implementation.” The CRC, by contrast, proceeds from the premise that implementation failures are often rooted in design failures, and that design is what constitutions are for.
Satisfaction with the status quo
The CRC’s report frames its work as moving Ghana’s constitutional framework “beyond the structures that have sustained electoral democracy since 1992, towards a governance architecture that delivers sustained development outcomes.” It explicitly adopts a problem-solving approach, tying recommendations to observed governance failures, including in checks and balances, decentralisation, human rights, and the cost of politics.
The government’s paper acknowledges this framing but then re-anchors the debate in constitutional conservatism: the Constitution is supreme, amendments must be rare, and where possible, problems should be addressed through existing mechanisms. In effect, it expresses confidence that the constitutional design of the presidency, parliament, judiciary, appointments, financial management, and decentralisation is fundamentally sound, requiring only incremental statutory and administrative tweaks.
That confidence implies satisfaction not only with the text but with the outcomes the text has produced: the current balance of power between executive and legislature, the current mode of judicial appointments and tenure, the existing anti-corruption arrangements, and the present state of economic governance and public finance. For citizens and reform advocates who experience these outcomes as inequitable, politicised, or structurally biased, this is precisely the problem: government comfort with a system that has failed to deliver the transformation the 1992 Constitution promised.
Where the government leans into reform
It is telling that the government is more willing to accept recommendations when they align with politically salient or internationally visible priorities—such as certain human rights enhancements, abolition of the death penalty, and aspects of electoral administration—often proposing a comprehensive Human Rights Act rather than embedding new rights directly into the Constitution. The paper states that, for fundamental rights, it “accepts the spirit” of CRC recommendations but prefers statute over constitutional entrenchment.
This approach allows the government to appear rights-forward while retaining discretion over the content, timing, and enforceability of those rights through ordinary legislation. It simultaneously resists deeper structural reforms to executive power, parliamentary independence, judicial governance, and public financial management—areas that materially redistribute authority and constrain future governments.
In other words, the government is more open to reforms that do not significantly disturb the existing allocation of power, and more resistant to reforms that would lock in stronger constraints on that power at constitutional level.
Why rejecting the government’s position matters
Rejecting the government’s position paper is not a rejection of caution in constitutional amendment; it is a rejection of a particular logic of caution that assumes the current architecture is fundamentally adequate. Ghana’s lived experience suggests otherwise: recurring concerns over executive dominance, politicised appointments, uneven judicial independence, weak anti-corruption enforcement, and centralised control over public finance and decentralisation are not simply enforcement problems; they are structural.
When a government insists that “existing laws and administrative mechanisms” can take care of these issues, it is asking citizens to trust the same levers that have already failed, without strengthening the constitutional guarantees that would force those levers to move. A constitution is precisely the place where a society chooses to limit and channel political discretion—where it refuses to rely on goodwill or transient policy priorities.
If the CRC has identified specific governance failures and proposed targeted constitutional remedies, then a response that repeatedly says “we can manage this under current law” is, in substance, a statement of satisfaction with the existing state of affairs. Those who are not satisfied—because they bear the cost of institutional inertia in their courts, their districts, their public services, and their livelihoods—have reason to insist that the Constitution itself be strengthened, not merely the footnotes around it.
The government will therefore need to “come again”: not with more assurances that there are laws on the books, but with a willingness to entrench reforms at the constitutional level, so that the next government—and the one after that—cannot simply choose not to implement them.
Mind the GAP 
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