By Iddi Yire, GNA
Accra, Jan. 18, GNA – The Ghana News Agency reproduces the full text of the communiqué issued at the end of the 70th Annual New School and Conference.
Full text:
“Communique Issued at the 70th Annual New Year School and Conference, Organised by the School of Continuing and Distance Education, College of Education, University of Ghana, from 14th – 17th January, 2019
Strong institutions contribute to citizens’ well-being by protecting citizens, checking corruption, providing access to justice and ensuring fair distribution of basic services and resources.
It is against this backdrop that, the School of Continuing and Distance Education, University of Ghana organized its 70th Annual New year School and Conference under the theme; “Building Strong Institutions for Democratic Consolidations in Ghana.
At the end of four days of deliberations and contributions by Ministers of State, parliamentarians, metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs), academics, experts, resource persons, practitioners and participants from all walks of life, the following recommendations were made:
1. In order to ensure that the speaker remains committed to the work of Parliament and remain fair to both sides, Parliament should elects its Speaker instead of him/her being appointed by the Executive.
2. A legislation, must be made to limit the number of ministers that can be appointed by the President. The constitutional provision that more than 50 per cent of Ministerial appointments should come from Parliament must be reviewed.
3. The Constitutional Review Implementation Committee has recommended a review of 97 provisions of the Constitutions including 46 that are entrenched. We observe that this would require several referenda leading to a piecemeal and more costly approach to amending the constitution. The government should therefore initiate steps to rewrite the entire Constitution towards strengthening our institutions and consolidating our democracy.
4. To ensure that political parties perform their developmental functions and deliver on their manifestos, Government through Parliament should consider some form of state funding for Political Parties.
5. The sanctions regime for political parties which flout the regulations governing party funding, accountability and transparency in their operations must be strengthened and enforced by the Electoral Commission.
6. In order to ensure that judges appointed to the various courts have the requisite experience and competencies, the Judicial Council should be given absolute authority in the appointment of judges.
7. The Judicial Service should be allowed to retain 100 per cent of its Internally Generated Funds to finance their operations in order to offset delays in the release of their budgetary allocations.
8. Constitutional anti-Corruption bodies should be well resourced and their appointed heads should be given a fixed term of office to guarantee their independence from political influence.
9. The special Prosecutors office must be provided with adequate human and financial resources to enable the office to become fully operational. The timely release of funds should be ensured for his operations.
10. The independent governance institutions such as the Electoral Commission, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice and the National Commission for Civic Education must be well resourced and budgetary allocations released well in time to enable them play their respective constitutional roles more effectively.
11. The Ministry of Education through the Ghana Education Service should revise the basic and secondary education curricula to incorporate constitutional and anti-corruption studies to inculcate desirable ethical standards and civic responsibility in the future generation.
12. In order to ensure high journalistic standards and practice in the country we recommend that the National Media Commission should set a framework for the conduct and practice of investigative journalism within the legal, social and ethical standards of the profession and international best practices.
13. Given the important role that investigative journalism plays in exposing corruption in Ghana, the National Media Commission should establish a fund to support capacity building and protection of investigative journalists.
14. All Political Parties should disband their vigilante groups and persons engaged in vigilantism or hooliganism should be severely punished to serve as a deterrent to others.
15. Access to information is critical to the fight against corruption, Parliament is therefore called upon to pass the Right to Information Bill without further delay.
16. The Electoral Commission should take steps to fully digitize their processes and systems to minimize the propensity for human manipulation and ensure efficiency in their operation.
17. To ensure a consistent approach to the decentralisation implementation by successive governments, the government must develop a National Framework that would adequately respond to the decentralisation standards.
18. The government should expedite the setting up of the legal framework and associated processes for the election of MMDCEs in order to make them directly accountable to their constituents.
19. The substructures of the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) should be strengthened for effective policy development and implementation by ensuring that the 30 per cent appointees of the Government are technocrats.
Conclusions:
It is our hope that these recommendations would be adopted by the Government of Ghana and other stakeholders in order to build strong institutions for democratic consolidation in the country.”
GNA
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