Four years is too short for a presidential term- John Agyekum Kufuor

Ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor has revealed that the mandated four years tenure for a presidential term in Ghana is too short.

Explaining his reasons for his position in an interview on Accra based station Asaase Radio, he stated that the stipulated number of years is inadequate in reconciling and resolving the colossal problems riddled in developing countries like Ghana.  

“Four years is too short. My Last statement to Parliament, I used that occasion to tell the people that for a developing country like our nation with so many, with the greatest of respect, handicaps [and] drawbacks to tackle has four years tenure. I thought it was too short.”

Commenting on whether he had contemplated amending the constitution to enable him extend his stay in office after 2008, the two term president said, “Never and Nobody”.

“The group in which I was, I don’t think would ever think of talking of violating the constitution of the nation, the foundation of it being the sovereignty of the people. The people are the real sovereign authority and it is through this exercise of their sovereignty that we had a state.

“The people’s constitution defines the state and the people, by promulgating the constitution will define what the state is  and the institutions of state and so if the constitution says four-year term, tenure for you as president unless the people amend the constitution to lengthen the stay you can’t do it. If the people haven’t done and you, with whatever group of people or cabal, think you know better than the people whose constitution it is to find a way to stay on because you think you could have made Ghana into something else, then you are violating the constitution, you are staging a coup d’état against the people.”

John Agyekum Kufuor

Additionally, he noted that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration under former President Jerry John Rawlings once lied to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), leading to Ghana being fined $36 million.

He said this was part of the monumental economic challenges that the NDC administration left for him to come and deal with after the 2000 elections.

“From Day One into office when we discovered that our economy was overladen with indebtedness, immediately we saw that we have been hit, we couldn’t even get crude oil to get for TOR to refine for petrol stations and all. How would we last? In fact, one of the opponents had even said they were waiting to see if the government will last for three months. It was like we were forced into some trap, and looking ahead we saw an abyss that unless we did some very fast work we may have problems.

“We tried talking our way around within the donor partners to see if they would trust that we had come in with a different outlook and ideology and philosophy and that we would do things differently from the outgone administration  but they wouldn’t listen to us.

“The multilateral, the IMF, they told us the previous regime had misreported to them about the state of the economy and Ghana was fined $36 million. They said unless we settled that fine they won’t trade with us”.