By Nathaniel Nartey
Tomorrow Friday, January 7 marks Constitution Day. The day is to celebrate the country’s stable period of democratic rule and to recognize the coming into force of the 1992 Constitution and the beginning of the 4th Republic.
The day was first marked in 2019 after Parliament amended the Public Holidays Act to add January 7, and two other days as Statutory Public Holidays.
Constitution Day is often characterized by a number of activities, notable among them is a commemorative public Lecture on a selected topic.
For this year, Governance Analyst Fred Oduro Agyarko is proposing that the Public Lecture is held on the topic:“Appreciating our Constitutional Challenges and Overcoming Democratic Difficulties”.
He said although Constitution Day remains significant, the government should go beyond the Usual Public Lectures done in Accra by decentralizing the day in various local languages.
He told Nathaniel Nartey that Institutions such as Parliament, the Police and Military can use the occasion to open its doors to the public for education and sensitization of its work in order to bring its services closer to the people.
”I would go for a topic like : Appreciating our Constitutional Challenges and overcoming our Democratic Difficulties. I think we have so many challenges with our Constitution and difficulties with our democracy and if we can start a debate around this topic, I think we need to have a look at our Constitution again and we need to find ways of overcoming our democratic difficulties”, Fred Oduro Agyarko noted.
He went on to say that “quite a number of activities are used to mark the day but I think we can do more than the Public lectures, because we have too many Constitutional illiterates in the system who speak about the Constitution, but have no idea what they are talking about”.
