Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:08:20 +0000
The making of a new Constitution has every sign of failure due to alleged lack of political will by the PF government, the Oasis Forum has said.
Oasis spokesman Fr Cleophus Lungu said it was becoming clear that the PF government was slowly losing the political will to let this process be people driven.
Fr Lungu said there were signs it will fail because government had continued to maintain silence on key concerns that had been raised by various stakeholders.
He said even the K95 billion allocated to the Constitution Technical Committee (CTC) should be properly accounted for because it was public money.
Fr Lungu said putting such information in the public domain removed any suspicion of abuse of public resources.
He said that the Oasis Forum was also concerned with the recent happenings in the country that showed that government was intolerant of divergent views especially those different from theirs.
He stated that the essence of democracy that all views be respected must be maintained in Zambia, instead of using power to silence opposing views.
“We are also concerned that government has in the recent past effected a very suspicious deportation of a Catholic priest without due process for expressing a message which did not sit well with it.”
Fr Lungu further expressed concern over the treatment of some opposition leaders as one of the evidence of the intolerant behaviour the government was showing.
And in a separate interview with the Daily Nation, Non Governmental Organisation Coordinating Council (NGOCC) board chairperson Beatrice Grillo said the process in which the committee was simplifying the version in local languages was poorly done.
Ms Grillo said the process had showed that the committee had failed to reach its expectation, stating that it would be the waste of resources if the majority would come up with different views that would not be incorporated into the document.
“This process of Constitution making has taken long and the timing was not properly done and what will happen if in the process the two-third majority will not agree with the document? Then it will be useless, meaning it will need another resources to come up with a document that will stand the test of time, because it is meant to benefit all well meaning Zambians,” she said.
She explained that the simplified version was not inclusive and difficult for the people submitting their comments in local language to submit effectively.
