Accra:  Amendments to the transitional provisions in the 1992 Constitution granting indemnity to past military regimes will require delicate handling, the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has indicated. The position taken by CDD-Ghana reflects the strong variations among respondents in a study conducted by the Centre on the constitutional and democratic governance process in Ghana.

Mr. David Armah Attoh, Senior Research Fellow of CDD-Ghana, made this known at a media briefing in Accra to disseminate research findings on the Constitutional Review process. One other key finding is a strong popular support for constitutional reforms in a number of areas, particularly changes to curb executive power, increasing the strength of Parliament and creating greater accountability at the local government level.

The study also revealed that a majority of the respondents prefer that the Constitution impose an upper limit on the total number of Supreme Court justices, all of whom must sit on every case, that a minimum of tertiary education is required for qualification as Members of Parliament and that the Commission in Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) must be vested with power to conduct investigations into cases of corruption on its own initiative.

According to the study, a majority of respondents think that Members of Parliament should not double as Ministers, that the Constitution should be amended to make it easier for Members of Parliament to initiate,, introduce and pass bills into law and that the role of the Attorney-General as government's legal advisor should be separated from his position as lead prosecutor.

A majority of respondents, the study also reveals, prefer election of metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives and that the practice of the President appointing one-third of members of Assemblies be discontinued.

Also captured by the study are that a large majority respondents hold the view that the period for which suspects are legally held in remand must be specified in the constitution which, in fact, should be less than 2 months .

In his remarks before the presentation on the research findings, Ambassador Tsegah, Senior Research Fellow of CCD-Ghana noted that constitution reform has always been one of the focus areas of CDD-Ghana research.

For this reason, Ambassador Tsegah said, CDD-Ghana has undertaken an extensive study of key democratic institutions including the Judiciary, Legislature, CHRAJ, and Electoral Commission as well as in other areas of democratic governance, namely the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), African Development Bank and the Economic Commission for Africa, all of which raised and identified gaps in Ghana's 1992 Constitution.

Ambassador Tsegah said as a way of complementing, shadowing and facilitating this important national project to review and revise the 1992 Constitution, CDD-Ghana embarked on a 24-month project, beginning in October 2009, with some funding from the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF). He said the CDD-Ghana/UNDEF Constitutional Review/Reform project seeks to mobilise non-state, civil society and independent experts input into Ghana's constitutional review and reform process to help find long-term solutions to Ghana's democracy, good governance and development deficits.