‘The 1991 Constitution has only being used effectively for 7 years’ Expert revealed The Legislative Sub-committee of the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) on 12th November, 2014 organized a day’s capacity building training for its members at the CRC Secretariat, Miatta Conference Centre, Youyi Building in Freetown. CRC’s Executive Secretary, Samuel Coker dilated on the significance of the legislative arm of Government, noting that that the interactive forum was for participants to acquire knowledge in formulating laws and filling the Public Submission Forms and appealed to them to make meaningful contributions to the discourse. The Expert meeting, he furthered was also to capacitate members of the Legislative Sub-committee to answer critical questions relating to the law when engaging the public in the nationwide public and stakeholders’ consultations. The professionalism displayed by the resource person, Justice Nicolas Brown-Marke, a renowned legal luminary and lecturer at the Sierra Leone Law School was beyond the imagination of the participants. He enlightened that the entire Constitution would not be reviewed but that corrections would be made in areas where there are doubts adding that not everything would be in the Constitution. Nicolas Browne-Marke further stated that entrenched clauses in the Constitution could not be altered without the conduct of a referendum and informed that provision would be made for acts to be amended and replaced asserting that “It is unlikely” that a referendum would be conducted in 2015 for the reviewed Constitution due to the Ebola outbreak. He further attributed the frequent review of Constitutions in Africa to political instability and cited Senegal and Ivory Coast as two countries that have not reviewed their Constitutions since independence until recently and continued that laws enacted by Parliament can govern the country’s daily activities reiterating that the CRC would review areas in the Constitution that are of concern to the public. Other topical issues participants discussed included the age to vote and be voted for, whether the age of 21 should be maintained or extended, the tax obligations of people eligible to vote and admonished that in drafting or reviewing a constitution, people should not look at the past but the future and how they want Sierra Leone to look like in the next 40-50 years. Mr Nicolas Browne-Marke also gave the background to the 1991 Constitution and the setting up of the Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC), its nomenclature, whether the Commissioners should work full time or part time and must be resident in the regions, if the Chairperson of the National Electoral Commission should be a member of the PPRC adding that the reason for the decision was for the holder to be au fait with developments with political parties prior to an election. Participants also suggested that the functions of the PPRC Chairman must be clearly spelt out and defined by Parliament. Also discussed was the naming of constituencies by name or number, that delimitation of constituencies should take place every three years due to the movement of people and increase in population and that bye-elections should take place immediately when there is a vacancy and not after six months. Other issues discussed were that if the President should not appoint judges; whether the President or someone else must do it. He informed the meeting that the 1991 Constitution has been used effectively for only 7 years due to political upheavals. Whether the country should operate the two tier parliamentary system comprising the upper and lower chambers. The issue of Paramount Chiefs and the presence in the House of Parliament vis a vis their allegiance to the ruling government, the relevance of chiefdom administration. The issue of whether MPs should be entitled to pension and the number of years they must serve before they benefit from the pension and citizenship. Earlier, the resource person guided participants to take into consideration the fact that Sierra Leone is a signatory to many international treaties and conventions, is not living in isolation, would not want to be left out behind on global issues and to broadly look at all the issues.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 15:19:43 +0000
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