By: Franklin ASARE-DONKOH
The Convenor of a pressure group, FixtheCountry Movement and researcher, Mr. Oliver Barker-Vormawor, has charged Ghanaians to adopt a new constitution instead of a few amendments to the 1992 Constitution.
According to him, most Ghanaians have lost belief and hope in Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution and are no longer compelled by the moral authority of the document.
“A new Constitution is a process! Not an event. It is an opportunity to rebuild our society’s belief and desire for change from the ground up. We must knock on every door; we must engage every citizen and we must implant in all of us a new belief for change,” he explained.
Mr. Barker-Vormawor, who was one of the speakers of the “Joy Change Speakers Series IV”, on Newsfile, a current affair program aired on an Accra-based JoyNews insisted that a few textual amendments will not revive people’s hope in the 1992 Constitution.
“The problem we are facing isn’t one of bad or inelegant drafting. It is about restoring back faith in project Ghana. I am sorry! Cutting and pasting here and there will not solve the problem. Because the Constitution of a nation is so much more than a simple road traffic law. It carries with it the hopes and aspirations of a people,” Mr. Barker-Vormawor retorted.
The Convenor of the FixtheCountry Movement explained that this process and a new constitution can ground the passion for a just society in the hearts and minds of people across this country.
“Unless people accept with joy and desire this mandate to build from among all of us, a constitution of our own making, unless people understand that a new constitution of our own making, is in fact an invitation to rebuild the moral compass of this nation, we will fail.
No amendments to the 1992 Constitution, be it written in Hebrew, Aramaic or Arabic can wake up consciousness and a sense of belief that is dead and gone,” he emphasised.
