The controversial Bill 7 will come before a vote in Parliament today.
The occasion is coming about with many key stakeholders in the country still trying to come to terms with how President Hakainde Hichilema has insisted on taking a bill before the house whose very standing has been questioned by the Constitutional Court as lacking the necessary legal foundation and consensus.
We are not just sure if Hichilema will also say the justices at the Constitutional Court are of a certain regional clique who are opposed to his maneuvers in the constitution on account of the region he hails from, particularly that a huge chunk was actually appointed by himself.
We would have thought that President Hichilema would gain the wisdom and message from the signal those at the Constitutional Court, mainly viewed as favourable to him, were sending to him in order to change course and embark on an all encompassing constitutional amendment programme. We also would have through that he would take the advice from the Church mother bodies, who are not actually politicians, in order to accommodate them and incorporate their views on such an important matter as the constitution. However, that was not to be. Hichilema, undeterred by the judgement from the courts, simply deferred Bill 7 while coming up with a Technical Committee on constitutional amendments.
Common wisdom would have demanded that if he insisted on proceeding on his path, the least he could have done was to withdraw Bill 7 in order to give the Technical Committee he had appointed some semblance of normalcy. However, it is clear that he appointed them simply to rubber stamp his original position on this matter. Going by his mindset, we don’t think he will even consider some of the good recommendations they have made, such as the suggestion to appoint ministers from outside Parliament, keep the members of parliament outside councils and conduct a transparent delimitation exercise, among other recommendations.
The UPND actually sounds bullish that Bill 7 is unstoppable. This probably explains why Hichilema waited for all these years until the 11th hour to embark on the constitutional amendments. The idea was to develop sufficient political muscle in Parliament that would clear the path for him the moment he introduced this self-serving bill. It explains the strategy behind the arrests of several opposition members of parliament, with Speaker Nelly Mutti quickly moving in to declare their seats vacant so that the ruling UPND could quickly move into the constituencies through the use of state power to win those seats to themselves. This was being done while ensuring that the biggest opposition party, the PF, was made as handicapped as possible and literally stopped from participating in the elections.
It explains why surrogates in PF were quickly organised and their registrations quickly effected at the Registrar of Societies. Hichilema was playing the long game, not in the interest of promoting democracy but to put in place an architecture that would favour his and the ruling party’s poltical interests, and the interests of that political party’s support base.
By Daily Revelation Editor
The controversial Bill 7 will come before a vote in Parliament today.
The occasion is coming about with many key stakeholders in the country still trying to come to terms with how President Hakainde Hichilema has insisted on taking a bill before the house whose very standing has been questioned by the Constitutional Court as lacking the necessary legal foundation and consensus.
We are not just sure if Hichilema will also say the justices at the Constitutional Court are of a certain regional clique who are opposed to his maneuvers in the constitution on account of the region he hails from, particularly that a huge chunk was actually appointed by himself.
We would have thought that President Hichilema would gain the wisdom and message from the signal those at the Constitutional Court, mainly viewed as favourable to him, were sending to him in order to change course and embark on an all encompassing constitutional amendment programme. We also would have through that he would take the advice from the Church mother bodies, who are not actually politicians, in order to accommodate them and incorporate their views on such an important matter as the constitution. However, that was not to be. Hichilema, undeterred by the judgement from the courts, simply deferred Bill 7 while coming up with a Technical Committee on constitutional amendments.
Common wisdom would have demanded that if he insisted on proceeding on his path, the least he could have done was to withdraw Bill 7 in order to give the Technical Committee he had appointed some semblance of normalcy. However, it is clear that he appointed them simply to rubber stamp his original position on this matter. Going by his mindset, we don’t think he will even consider some of the good recommendations they have made, such as the suggestion to appoint ministers from outside Parliament, keep the members of parliament outside councils and conduct a transparent delimitation exercise, among other recommendations.
The UPND actually sounds bullish that Bill 7 is unstoppable. This probably explains why Hichilema waited for all these years until the 11th hour to embark on the constitutional amendments. The idea was to develop sufficient political muscle in Parliament that would clear the path for him the moment he introduced this self-serving bill. It explains the strategy behind the arrests of several opposition members of parliament, with Speaker Nelly Mutti quickly moving in to declare their seats vacant so that the ruling UPND could quickly move into the constituencies through the use of state power to win those seats to themselves. This was being done while ensuring that the biggest opposition party, the PF, was made as handicapped as possible and literally stopped from participating in the elections.
It explains why surrogates in PF were quickly organised and their registrations quickly effected at the Registrar of Societies. Hichilema was playing the long game, not in the interest of promoting democracy but to put in place an architecture that would favour his and the ruling party’s poltical interests, and the interests of that political party’s support base.
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