YALI seeks to know progress on constitution amendment bill

The Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) has called on the Minister of Justice to brief the nation on progress that has been made towards the introduction of the Constitution Amendment Bill in Parliament as stated in his last Ministerial statement.

YALI Governance Advisor Isaac Mwanza has noted that despite Constitutional provisions in Article 79 (2) that require that before the Bill to amend the Constitution is introduced in Parliament, the Bill must be published one month in the Government Gazette, there seems to be no Gazette on this matter so far.

Mr Mwanza says this is raising a lot of questions whether Government is really committed to bringing the Constitution Bill to Parliament.

He adds that the Ministry of Justice should also have engaged with all stakeholders to come up with some consensus on which clauses must be brought to Parliament in June for debate and enactment, but that so far Government seem to take this process of selecting clauses in its own hands.

Mr Mwanza notes that the danger with this approach is that the PF administration will be accused of only taking to Parliament clauses which they feel comfortable with.

He says YALI also reminds President Edgar Lungu that if his Government isn’t seen to be transparent in the manner it’s selecting the constitutional clauses for debate in Parliament, this process will continue to be viewed with distrust from stakeholders.

Mr Mwanza says as Republican President, it is within his mandate of asking his Minister of Justice to ensure citizens and more people are engaged in selecting which articles must be presented to Parliament for enactment