4-Year Election Cycle Holding Ghana Back – Public Governance Expert

A public governance expert has urged Ghanaians to consider reforming the 1992 constitution to extend the president’s term in office to five years or more.

Dr Daniel Appiah who proposed this idea believes this modification is critical to achieving the development the country earnestly seeks to achieve.

According to him, successive governments are unable to undertake long-term projects due to the short period they spend in office.

“If you compare Ghana to other African countries, you will see that it’s only Ghana and Nigeria that goes to the polls every four years to change the government and change those managing our public sector. You won’t find any other African country, they go to the polls every five years or more.

“So they have the longer-term duration for the executive to plan well and do long, medium, and short-term projects,” he said on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Thursday.

Although it has been barely two years since the last elections, Dr Appiah observed that the political space has been flooded with many campaign messages.

“As we speak, Mahama has gone to pick nomination forms, Alan [Kyerematen] is out there campaigning, meanwhile, we have two more years to go for this government’s tenure to end. And if you want to win the elections, you don’t go doing medium and long-term projects like the railway sector.

“You have to go for short terms projects in order to win. This nature of our governance system is not helping and unless we take a good look at that we won’t be able to make progress. If you are a developing country you cannot use this short tenure to develop any long and medium-term projects,” he said.

The call for extension of presidential tenure goes back to 2009 when erstwhile President John Kufuor proposed to Parliament.

Many governance and development strategies have also suggested same proposal to transform the country. However, the legislature is yet to deliberate on it.

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