Vice President calls for amendment of Transition Act

Vice President and Head of the transitional team, Papa Kwasi Amissah-Arthur has called for an amendment of the Transition Act 845 on grounds that the Act does not make provisions for an incumbent government to transfer power to herself as happened in the case of President John Dramani Mahama.

President John Mahama handed over the Presidential mantle to himself during his inaugural ceremony on Monday, January 7, 2013.

He was re-elected President of the nation following the demise of the late President John Evans Atta Mills.

Addressing the media in Accra, Vice President Amissah Arthur indicated that the Act which makes provisions for a government to democratically transfer political power to another, demands some revision due to the recent turn of events.

He said “‘’we have identified quite a number of areas where we have to hopefully revise and amend the law Act 854” and continued that "the Act 845 assumes that somebody will be in power and another person would have won the election and that’s the assumption.’’

"In every election where the president may win his re-election like it has happened now, the composition assumes that two president’s one an incumbent and the incoming would have to form a transition team.’’ he also stated.

 He explained the  “incumbent specifies which ministers will be members from his side and then the incoming president because he wouldn’t have ministers at that time will then propose an equal number of people.”

He therefore called for a reconsideration and clarification of the provisions in the Transition Act.

He indicated: “The first provision that needs re-consideration is in relation to the swearing in of parliament.” “According to law 845 there were two parliaments in Ghana in the last two days which is not what the constitution expects.”

According to him, the constitution states “that parliament will be in existence for exactly four years from 7th January and on the 4th anniversary on the midnight it is dissolved and then a new one is formed,’’ and so, the transition team”tried to get around that by saying that you have to swear the oath and then two days later it will become effective. A lot of lawyers said this is a very an impractical way of addressing an issue. So we decided to go strictly according to the constitution so we ignored Act 845 in that respect in order for this to happen.”

From: Adu Gyamfi Ameyaw