Friday, March 29, 2024

CSOs demand for the release of the Constitution draft by the end of the month

Share

A CONSORTIUM of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) has demanded that the second draft of the Constitution be released for public scrutiny by September 30, this year.

The consortium comprising of about 260 CSOs have since engaged the Minister of Justice Wynter Kabimba and the Technical Committee on Drafting the Constitution.

Speaking during a press briefing yesterday, representative of the CSOs, Andrew Ntewewe said the group was dismayed by the prolonged delay in finalizing the Constitution review process.

“The group is of the view that this work would have been finalized by now if the government premised this important task on a clear and well-thought out road-map” he said.

Mr Ntewewe implored government to make firm commitments on a definite timeline for the release of the second draft national Constitution and mode of adoption.

He maintained that the CSOs would not campaign for the draft Constitution if the correct process would not be followed and was not reflective of the basic minimum principles which include equality before the law, clear separation of power and amendments requiring majority support.

Women for Change Executive Director Beatrice Grillo said the CSOs had also embarked on a campaign for a People-driven constitution.

Ms Grillo reiterated that the CSOs were of the view that a referendum was the best mode of adoption of the national document.

She said that the nationwide campaign would culminate into public sensitization programmes through prayer meetings, mass community civil education, radio and television programmes to stimulate youth action on the referendum.

Spokesperson of the Technical Committee on Drafting the Zambian Constitution Ernest Mwansa at the weekend said the final draft constitution has been finalized and was currently being edited.

Mr Mwansa said that the drafts persons had completed compiling the final draft constitution and were currently making few adjustments to the document.

He said the drafts persons had submitted the finalized document to the Committee to go through.

2 COMMENTS

Comments are closed.

Read more

Local News

Discover more from Lusaka Times-Zambia's Leading Online News Site - LusakaTimes.com

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading