NCC hands over final Draft Constitution

THE National Constitutional Conference (NCC) yesterday handed over the final Draft Constitution and Report to Justice Minister and Vice-President George Kunda.

Receiving the two documents, Mr Kunda commended the NCC secretariat and delegates for successfully adopting the Draft Constitution saying it compared favourably with constitutions of other countries.

He said the NCC Act of 2007 stood repealed and the membership of all members has expired although some members of the secretariat would continue in office to wind up until November 30.

The NCC had introduced the limitation of two presidential terms and that parliament could not amend it and also introduced national economic planning, recognised gifts and aid-in-kind given on behalf of Zambia.

Mr Kunda said the NCC process started in 2007 when the Government responded to the recommendation by the Mung’omba Constitution Review Commission (CRC) that the Draft Constitution should be adopted by a Constituent Assembly, a constitutional conference or any representative body.

In accordance with the NCC Act, all provisions of the final draft that were adopted should be submitted to his office for presentation to parliament for enactment.

The conference decided that provisions that would alter the bill of rights and article 79 of the current Constitution should be referred to a referendum for the people to determine.

Mr Kunda said now that the Government had received the final Draft Constitution, it would start legislative processes that preceded the submission of a bill to alter the Constitution.

The conference increased the composition of the National Assembly to 266 including the speaker, introduced the parliamentary service commission and adopted the provisions to establish a constitutional and an appeal court.

The introduction of the two courts also had significant implications for which careful planning must be done and at an appropriate time Government would take measures for the implementation of the constitutional provisions and present a bill to parliament.

Mr Kunda said that at the same time Government would prepare to submit to Parliament a Referendum Bill containing the provisions that would seek to alter the bill of rights and article 79 of the current constitution those the NCC failed to agree on.

If the people would approve the provisions through a referendum, a Bill would then be submitted to Parliament for the enactment of the approved constitutional provisions.

Mr Kunda also commended late president Levy Mwanawasa for starting the process and thanked President Banda for supporting and ensuring that the process was concluded.

He said the process had been concluded despite incessant attacks from people who wanted to derail the process as they had ignored the fact that the Mung’omba Draft Constitution recommended the NCC and wanted it to be rubber stamped when it had a mandate to vary or alter the proposals.

NCC chairperson Chifumu Banda said five articles and the Bill of Rights were referred to a Referendum, being article 64 (1) which provided for progressive realisation of economic social and cultural rights and article 79 (1) on the electoral process.

Mr Banda said others were article 143 (2) (I) which provided for legislative power of the National Assembly and article 148 (8) (A) which was about vacation of office of an MP and article 273 (3) (A) on Government borrowing.

He said the NCC decided to take all adopted articles to the National Assembly while those on which consensus was not reached would be taken to a Referendum.

[Times of Zambia]