YALI Commends President Lungu for Showing Leadership on Constitution

ZAMBIAN YouthS HAIL President Lungu for showing leadership on DELIVERING A PEOPLE DRIVEN Constitution

The Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) commends Members of the Zambian Parliament from both the opposition and ruling party for showing leadership in passing progressive amendments to the people driven Constitution of Zambia which reflects the peoples will, and will greatly contribute to bettering Zambia’s governance and increase levels of transparency and accountability in the quest by successive governments to serve the people of Zambia.

We particularly want to commend His Excellency, President Edgar Lungu, the Honourable Minister of Justice, Dr. Ngosa Simbiyakula, and his entire administration for having listened to the voice of young people from both YALI and other citizens who, on 13th May 2014 and subsequently, proposed to the Zambian Government a constitution roadmap which abides by provisions of the law when enacting or re-enacting the constitution.

We want to place it on record that while our dear colleagues in the Grand Coalition and LAZ had continued to make unrealistic demands to adopt and enact the Final Draft Constitution in its current form even though it was clear that lack of validation of the Final Draft Constitution had led to glaring inconsistencies, YALI continued to provide guidance to the Zambian public as well as stakeholders, and engaged as much as was feasible, with both government and opposition political parties to seek a win-win situation. Parliament had indeed the duty and constitutional mandate to check the glaring inconsistencies on behalf of the 14 million Zambian people whom they represent. YALI has now been vindicated for speaking the truth and proposing a viable roadmap that has finally produced a people driven Constitution. We hope that the Grand Coalition will now appreciate YALIs wisdom and avoid further misleading Zambians on the Constitution making process.

We wish to point out that, when President Edgar Lungu suggested a meeting “of all stakeholders” to “decide on the contentious issues”, YALI and well-meaning progressive citizens, wrote to the President through the Minister of Justice to express our concern at this attempt to cherry-pick through the draft. We strongly advised government to leave the Draft untouched and, instead, to submit the entire draft to ALL the political parties through the people’s elected representatives in Parliament, to scrutinise the entire document and come up with a final constitution for the Republic. Needless to say, Part III was to be left untouched until a referendum had been held alongside the 2016 general elections as suggested by YALI and in accordance with current law.

Way Forward after passing of Constitution Bills in Parliament

We commend His Excellency President Lungu for heeding our progressive call to reason by submitting the Draft Constitution untouched, for scrutiny and debate by our Parliament, which ended in both government and an opposition MP suggesting amendments. We want to re-emphasise that the adoption of the Bills at Third Reading in Parliament has given Zambians at least 80 percent of provisions contained in the Draft Constitution with the exception of:

1. an enlarged National Assembly with an additional 94 MPs through the proportional representation intended to introduce selection of some members of Parliament from lists submitted by political parties;
2. establishment of provincial assemblies;
3. appointment of cabinet outside Parliament; and

which have all been shelved to allow for further consultations. It is our fervent hope that these clauses will be re-submitted to parliament after due consultation.

YALI now calls on President Lungu to continue showing leadership by giving his presidential assent to the Constitutional Bill and to further declare a “Constitution Week” that would allow Zambians to reflect on the type of supreme law by which Zambia is to be governed, to achieve greater understanding of the contents of their Constitution, and to enable all Zambians, especially our MPs, gain a new perspective on Constitutional provisions which they may have missed in the heat of parliamentary debate.

We call upon our fellow Zambians to continue on the path to progressively improving our supreme law.

As President Lungu gives assent to the Constitutional Bill, we call on him to direct his Minister of Justice to open consultations on the key provisions that were shelved, with the possibility of tabling the same during the session that will take place from February 2016. We want to remind President Lungu and his fellow leaders from Government that these key provisions can be enacted in the Constitution with the possibility of deferring their implementation.

In the wise words of the late Justice Minister George Kunda when he addressed the House on March 29, 2011,

“with regard to the enlargement of the National Assembly, such deferral is necessitated by the requirement for an Act of Parliament to give effect to the proportional representation segment of the mixed member representation system”.

The PF leadership and Government can also learn from examples around the region such as Zimbabwe, Kenya, and the outside world such as Brazil that considered the option of enacting and deferring operationalization of constitutional provisions when they were drafting and enacting their Constitutions in circumstances of economic difficulty and political transition. Their counterpart in these countries did not give economic costs and challenges as an excuse when faced with deciding on how to deal with their people’s wishes.

We are confident that President Lungu can once again provide leadership for Government to enact these clauses but defer their implementation. Again, we remind government about how deferment is done by quoting Vice President, the late George Kunda when he said to Parliament,

“…the deferral of the operation of certain provisions is important so as to allow the legislative process to run its course and to ensure that the resultant legislation stipulates all matters that are cardinal to, pertain to or are connected with, or incidental to, the effective operation of the said provisions.”

Finally, we wish to remind our erstwhile colleagues in the Grand Coalition, who were constantly issuing malicious remarks, threats and sometimes orchestrated insults against those with opposing views. We call on them to sober up and now seriously reflect and join efforts to help deliver the referendum on the Bill of Rights if they truly want to see progress made on the Constitution. If there are lessons learnt from this process, one such lesson is that stubbornness or arrogance born of a self-centred desire to have one’s way, on national matters that involve everyone, does not and will not deliver results. We advise once more the Grand Coalition to desist from misleading the Nation at their press briefing tomorrow that what has been produced is not a people driven Constitution when 80% of contents of the draft Constitution has been adopted.

Zambia’s current constitutional reform process also demonstrates the validity of what one American scientist, Margaret Mead said, to never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Andrew Ntewewe
President
YOUNG AFRICAN LEADERS INITIATIVE