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A look at Constitutionals contentious issues August 30, 2012 | Filed under: Features | Posted by: web editor

By KELVIN KACHINGWETHE contentious issues are many.Dual citizenship

Vice-President as a running mate, Cabinet outsideParliament, Parliamentary Secretaries,Constitutional Court, Proportional representation,Political party funding, The declaration of Zambiaas a Christian nation, And the list goes-on.

This will not be a straightforward caseIndications so far point to the fact that theenvisaged new constitution will not be easy toagree on. Of course, this is not what the majority

want to hear, particularly that the country has undergone a number of constitution-making processessince it gained independence in 1964.But the fact is that the draft constitution released on April 30 this year by the technical committee,appointed by President Sata in November last year to draft a new constitution, has not wholly beenagreed upon.

And that is after the technical committee reviewed the Mvunga Constitution Review CommissionReport and the 1991 Constitution of Zambia, the Mwanakatwe Constitution Review Commission, theMungomba Constitution Review Commission Report and Draft Constitution, the Zaloumis ElectoralReform Technical Committee Report and the National Constitutional Conference (NCC) Report andDraft Constitution.Not only that, according to the technical committee, the first draft constitution is based on the wishesof the people of Zambia.

Annel Silungwe, the technical committee chairperson and former Chief Justice, says the committee ismandated to consult widely including local and international experts on constitutional law andpractice.In this way, they reckon that the objective of drafting a constitution that reflects the aspirations of theZambians people will be met.

At a recent media orientation workshop on the constitution-making process, Justice Silungwe said itis clear that issues like running mate and proportional representation pose a challenge to somestakeholders and other members of the public in understanding them.There are interesting issues that have emerged from the comments made by members of the publicin the media. Some of these comments show that stakeholders and other members of the publicunderstand the proposed clauses in the first draft constitution.However, in some cases, it is clear that some stakeholders and other members of the public are yetto meaningfully understand some of the provisions contained in the document, he said.

Precisely because of that, they wanted the media, after their three-day orientation workshop held atMika Lodge in Kabulonga, Lusaka, to come-up with programmes specially tailored for theiraudience.It is incumbent upon you, as media and publicity personnel that will get out to explain theseprovisions, to see this workshop as an opportunity to learn and deepen your understanding of issuesin the first draft constitution.There is need for as many people as possible to have a better understanding of the first draftconstitution so that they can make informed comments, he said.

Well, that maybe soBut taking it from what transpired at the Mika Hotel, it is clear that it will not be an easy walk into thepark. The workshop was highly emotive, with the people that are supposed to educate the publicstrongly opposed to some of the provisions in the proposed draft constitution.Firstly, the declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation in the constitution.This is a highly divisive matter. Some people feel that because the majority of Zambians profess to be

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Christians, it is only right to enshrine it in the constitution that Zambia is a Christian nation althoughevery other person has the right to belong to any other religion he or she wants to.But there-in lies the problem.The fact that the Christian nation provision is included in the constitution is in itself discriminatory against other religions although proponents of this provision say it is non-discriminatory as itupholds the right of every person to enjoy his or her freedom of conscience.Baptist Minister Conrad Mbewe, in his Letter from Kabwata, says it seems the greatest problem withthe declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation and its documentation in the Zambian constitution isthat, in fact, the whole thing is a doctrinal error.According to the Bible, there is only one Christian nation. It is the church, he says.But one can even go further than that. Like Steve Biko did. Writing on Christianity, he saw it as beingprimarily foreign.Whereas Christianity had gone through rigorous cultural adaptation from ancient Judea throughRome, through London, through Brussels and Lisbon, somehow when it landed in the Cape, it wasmade to look fairly rigid. The people amongst whom Christianity was spread had to cast away theirindigenous clothing, their customs, their beliefs, which were all described as being pagan and

barbaric.Usage of the spear became a hall-mark of savagery. All too soon the people were divided into twocamps the converted and the pagans. Stripped of the core of their being and estranged from eachother because of their differences, the African people became a playground for colonialists, he

wrote.But in all fairness, this is a topic that needs its own large space.That said, there are other issues like the death penalty, the electoral system, proportionalrepresentation, provincial assemblies, and Parliamentary Secretaries that are likely to divide thepublic.Taking the tone from the participants at Mika Hotel, there is a general feeling that the draftconstitution is over-obsessed with the United States of America constitution and that of South

African, which is often hailed as being among the most progressive in the world.For most people, proportional representation will only lead to the mushrooming of small family parties as the chances of getting seats in Parliament will be highly enhanced as parties obtain seats

based on the proportion of the total votes cast in an election. And with the constitution makingprovisions for funding of political parties with representation in parliament, they do not need to beoverly encouraged to form their own party.The South African case is typical, where there are about 13 parties represented with some of themhaving only one seat in the National Assembly.But of course those in favour of this arrangement say it forms a basis for the achievement of fairrepresentation of all political players in an election.This system also uses multi-member constituencies in which several people are elected to represent aconstituency. Under this system, a constituency will have more than one seat. Put differently, incontesting for seats, each political party will nominate more than one candidate, perhaps equal to the

number of seats. After voting has taken place, the number of seats won by a political party or group of independentcandidates will be proportionate to the number of votes received. For instance, if 30 percent of voters

voted for Party A candidates, then roughly 30 seats will be given to that particular party. And if 10percent of voters voted for independent candidates, then 10 percent of the seats will be shared by theindependent candidates. At the end of it all, all parties that contested for seats in a multi-memberconstituency will have seats in Parliament and in the event that a particular party loses a Member of Parliament, then they will simply replace him with another who appears on their list.That may be soBut in terms of enacting a new constitution, it looks like it will be a long protracted process!

One Response to A look at Constitutionals contentious issueslumbwe kalubaSeptember 4, 2012 - 5:27 pm

would it not be for the better if the constitution making process took a long time because then more of the peoples views woulkd be collected and the constitution would be durable.

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a look at constitution - zambia daily mail

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