Contemporary Constitutional Issues in our Multiparty Democracy This brings me to the last point about the Re Akoto Case before we get down to business. However we look at it, the Re Akoto Case was an exercise in the maintenance of the colonial state. I have tried to establish elsewhere that the colonial state in Ghana lives on, and that “ Ghana@ 50[is] Colonized and Happy ” . 3 I also tried to communicate that the colonial state needs to be deconstructed especially by the lawmakers and the courts. What amazes me about the judgment in the Re Akoto Case is the extent to which the judges stubbornly refused to construct a distinct constitutionalism and constitutional jurisprudence for Ghana. The Re Akoto Case was a great opportunity to disapply the laws that were applied in that case. The horrible decisions of Liversidge v. Anderson,[1942] A.C. 206;[1941] 3 All E.R. 338,(H.L.); R. v. Home Secretary, Ex parte Green[1941] 3 All E R 104(CA); and R. v. Home Secretary, Ex Parte Budd[1942] 1 All E.R. 373(CA) were gladly swallowed by the Supreme Court with relish as they held that it was not lawful for any court to enquire into the reasonableness of the belief of the Secretary of State, in our case the President, that a person ought to be detained without trial for reasons of national security. They also held that the rights provisions of the 1960 Constitution, like the Coronation Oath of the Queen in England was not justiciable. The Supreme Court had effectively re-fastened Ghana to the apron strings of her colonizers and re­connected the umbilical cord to Britain, which umbilical cord was definitively slashed by the 1960 Constitution with the declaration of Republican status barely a year before the Re Akoto decision. The 1960 Constitution, in fact, contained in its article 42(4) the following decolonizing words: “ The Supreme Court shall[not] be … bound to follow the previous decisions of any court on questions of law ” . What is wrong with us? Why couldn ' t we, after a century of colonialism and imprisonment, become free when the prison guards opened the door? Why have we always insisted on remaining in prison? Now that I have satisfied the ghost of Re Akoto by making specific comments on the case, I will proceed to discuss the main theme for this lecture: “ Contemporary Constitutional Issues in our Multiparty Democracy ” . As I noted earlier, there are no contemporary constitutional issues in Ghana; all the issues that we pretend are contemporary have been discussed for decades; a lot of the constitutional matters which we portray as constitutional issues are not issues at all, and cannot, therefore, 3 Raymond A. Atuguba,“Ghana@ 50: Colonised and Happy”, in H. J. A. N. Mensa-Bonsu et. al.(eds) Ghana Law Since Independence: History, Development and Prospects,(Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, Legon, 2007), p. 571. 10