Member of Parliament for Tamale North Constituency Alhassan Sayibu Suhuyini says the commemoration of the Constitution Day lacks merits if the grounds for its celebration are undefined.
According to him, the absence of education and publicity makes the Constitution Day celebration irrelevant and apparently a waste of a day.
During his submission on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana, the Member of Parliament for Tamale North could not comprehend the rationale behind the day’s celebration and therefore requested for clarification.
“How is it to be celebrated? What’s it to promote? What role are citizens supposed to play in making sure that this holiday is meaningful?” he quizzed.
“I don’t see it well defined yet and that for me is a waste of a day,” Alhassan Sayibu Suhuyini expressed his worry on Tuesday.
The NDC lawmaker mentioned that government is not “taking steps to take advantage” to add value to either, “our constitutional law, governance, democracy, and it is just about speeches that are delivered to us from the presidency and maybe the NCCE also will go here and there. I don’t think we are taking advantage of it enough.”
“I don’t have anything against the holidays I just think that the confusion has to be dealt with so that we can take better advantage of these holidays to enrich our democracy and governance,” he added.
In December 2018 a bill was laid before Parliament to amend the Public Holidays Act 2001 to provide for three different holidays.
These new holidays were the 7th of January which was observed as Constitution Day earlier in 2019, the 4th of August which was described as Founders’ Day, and the 21st of September was marked as Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day.
In 2017, President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, proposed that August 4 should be observed as Founders’ Day in memory of the successive generations of Ghanaians who contributed to the liberation of the country from colonial rule and September 21 should be set aside as a Memorial Day for Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first President who was instrumental in the fight for the 6th March independence.
This bill was subsequently passed by Parliament and assented to by the President.
By: Bernard Ralph Adams | Metrotvonline.com | Ghana
