National Democratic Congress (NDC) Chairman Johnson Asiedu Nketiah has warned against personalizing the debate on presidential term limits, urging Ghanaians to focus on the constitutional principle rather than whether President John Dramani Mahama should seek a third term.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, Asiedu Nketiah said reducing the discussion to individual political ambitions undermines the broader question of democratic stability. “The underlying principle is about whether the nation should remove term limits or hold on to our constitutional term limits for presidents. It’s not about President Mahama,” he said.
The 1992 Constitution introduced presidential term limits to guarantee peaceful transfers of power, a feat Ghana had not achieved under previous dispensations. Asiedu Nketiah noted that the provision compelled former presidents Jerry Rawlings and John Agyekum Kufuor to leave office despite their enduring popularity.
“As at the time President Rawlings was exiting, he was still about the most popular person in the country. If there were no term limits, President Rawlings wouldn’t have exited at the time he exited,” he said. The same applied to President Kufuor.
Using a construction analogy, Asiedu Nketiah cautioned that removing constitutional safeguards before democratic institutions have fully matured risks collapse. “Before you erect concrete beams or a concrete floor, you do some woodwork. And then pour the concrete on it like liquid. It has to set and get hardened before you remove the woodwork. If you remove the woodwork prematurely, the whole thing collapses.”
He questioned whether Ghana’s democracy has matured sufficiently to operate without such guardrails, citing instability in countries where leaders altered constitutional arrangements to extend their rule. “If we are going to think about removing the term limits, how different are people going to see us from the people of Guinea who had a president who just removed the term limits and rigged the election, remained in power only to be booted out by the military?”
Asiedu Nketiah maintained that any discussion on changing term limits must prioritize national stability and democratic consolidation over individual political interests. The remarks come amid renewed public discourse on constitutional reform in Ghana, where term limits have been credited with enabling three peaceful transfers of power between rival parties since 2000.