The outgoing Swiss Ambassador, Simone Giger, has urged Ghana to use its constitutional review to strip power from the presidency and spread it across other institutions, arguing that too much authority sits with the president and in Accra for the country’s democracy to deepen.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Thursday, Giger said the 1992 Constitution had served Ghana well but was written for a different moment.
“It was a brilliant constitution for the time of the day. But it was also a transitional constitution. You have so many powers vested in the president. It’s very centralized. Everything is in Accra,” she said.
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The next phase of Ghana’s democratic development should devolve power and strengthen independent bodies, she said. “I really think the next step should be to decentralize power, deconcentrate power, and have proper checks and balances. All the institutions should have a say.”
She drew on Switzerland’s model, where authority is dispersed rather than held at the top.
“What the Swiss got right, better than anyone else probably, is that no one really holds power in Switzerland because everybody has a little bit of power. So we all keep each other in check,” she said. She cautioned against lifting another country’s system wholesale. “You cannot copy from any other country. But I think that was a major insight many, many years ago. Deconcentration is key,” she said.
The Swiss Ambassador, who is leaving after a four-year tour covering Ghana, Togo and Benin, praised the country’s democratic record and called its peaceful transfers of power a model for the continent. “We saw it also with the last elections. Again, a peaceful transfer of power. I went to observe the elections. It really touched my heart,” she said. Asked whether she backed decentralising power through the review, she replied, “A hundred per cent. A hundred per cent.”
Her call enters a live and contested debate.
The Constitutional Review Committee has finished its work and handed its recommendations to government, and Cabinet is set to finalise its position paper on the 1992 Constitution on Friday. But the direction of reform is disputed.
The commentator Brako-Powers has warned that the committee’s report would instead enlarge the president’s powers “through the backdoor”, and has rejected a proposal to extend the presidential term to five years.
“I’m 100 per cent sure that if you get this right now, then Ghana will be a different country,” Giger said.