Judiciary
The judicial power is vested in the judiciary and in the exercise of that power that judiciary is subject only to the Constitution. Over the years, questions have arisen as to whether the absence of a ceiling on the number of Supreme Court Justices impaired the independence of the judiciary, whether the selective empanelling of Supreme Court justices by the Chief Justice encouraged opinion-shopping, and whether the Justices of the Supreme Court should be subject to mandatory retirement.
Approximately 91% of the respondents believe there should be a ceiling of the number of Justices of the Supreme Court. However, there is no consensus on what the ceiling should be. A plurality (33.1%) will set the ceiling at 9 compared to 21.3% who will set it at 11 and 19.8% who will set it at 7. With respect to empanelling members of the Supreme Court, a plurality (40.1%) believe all justices of the Supreme Court should sit on all cases before the Supreme Court while approximately 56.1% believe that Supreme Court decisions should be subject to review. A majority would want the Regional Tribunals to be removed from the court structure.
Approximately 68% consider the current mandatory retirement age of Justices as necessary. Further, over 82% think that the mandatory retirement age limits should be extended to all constitutional offices and a plurality (40.1%) say this limit should be set between 60 to years.
Political Parties
According to Article 55(3) of the Constitution the internal organization of a political party should conform to democratic principles. I asked the respondents to evaluate the extent to which current political parties conform to democratic principles on an 11 point conformance scale (with endpoints labeled “minimally conform” and “maximally conform”) and some specific questions on how such democratic principles can be realized. The rankings of the political parties are tabulated in Table 2.
First, the scores are low indicating respondents’ evaluation that political parties are generally not conforming to democratic principles. No party scores 7. Second, NPP is judged to be the party that has the highest conformance rate, followed by CPP, PNC and NDC.
With respect to the specific questions, majority ( 64.3% and 54.3% respectively) of respondents indicate that political parties should be required to allow all their registered members to vote in their election for a flag-bearer as well as their national executives. The respondents were even more emphatic when it came to their view of the election of parliamentary candidates where 79.8% indicated all registered members of the political parties should be allowed to vote.
CHRAJ
The Constitution empowers CHRAJ (a) to investigate corruption allegations; (b) cases of human right abuses; and (c) conflict of interest cases by public officials in the discharge of their duties. Some have argued that this remit is too broad and should be reduced. I asked the respondents for their views on this issue. With respect to the mandate, about 68.7% indicated that the mandate was not too broad. However, assuming it was decided to reduce CHRAJ’s mandate, a plurality suggests that the investigation of conflict of interest cases should be taken away.
Contrary to a Supreme Court ruling, which held that CHRAJ could not initiate corruption allegation sua sponte (on its own), 75% of the respondents indicate CHRAJ should be able to initiate corruption allegation on its own. An even higher percent (78.3) indicate that CHRAJ should have the power to prosecute current government officials, which contrasts with the current requirement that all prosecutions are to be initiated by the Attor
Great job! I hope the government has a department that looks for information like this…if they get this information and will learn from it…Ghana will benefit. I’m not surprise EC made it to the top…five successful elections in a role…both EC and Ghanaians deserve our praise. I’ve always believe that Ghanains are well informed and this study confirms that. We’re on the right path, with a little more change in attitude our beloved country will make big strides.
doesn’t matter what I think of the NPP, I think we have just few good african leaders, so having one stand out as a good leader to the outside world is a credit to the country
people are observing and learning, so you can’t take them for granted. I didn’t read anything about the police. we all know what their viewn on police will be
it’s not surprising that ghanaians rate the electoral commission higherst. I think for ghana to go through 4 presidential elections is a big thing, all credit to the EC
it’s interesting that ghanaians are becoming so informed these days. I think for ordinary people to be able to say which branch of govement is working and which is not, is very encoraging. Good job, prof.