Constitutional Review Bill now set for amendment in February

When politics surpasses basic legal standards and public interest, the result is what is soon to be witnessed, that after hardly three months the widely protested Constitutional Review Bill is going to be amended. Expectations of amending the bill that had already been signed into law by President Jakaya Kikwete follows consecutive meetings of leaders of various opposition parties with the president, to strike a consensus on the constitutional review process. Leaders of Chadema, the leading opposition party in Parliament as well as the Civic United Front (CUF) and NCCR-Mageuzi all had the same feeling after holding extensive consultations with President Kikwete. At one point there were sideline discussions taking three hours between the president and Chadema chairman Freeman Mbowe. That is why reports have now formally been acknowledged that the government intends to present an amendment bill the Constitutional Review Act, for submitting to the National Assembly in its February sitting starting next week. One area of consensus tdhat the president reportedly agreed with leaders of opposition parties is that he would pick members of the envisaged Constitutional Review Commission from a list to be proposed by a cross-section of the variouys stakeholders of the constitutional review process, including political parties and civil society organizations. The sections set for amendment are 6 and 18 which seek to debar from appointment of the Constitutional Review Commission members of the public who are not MPs, Members of the House of Representatives of Zanzibar or ward councilors. The amendments also aim at allowing organizations, associations and groups of persons to collect views of their members on the Draft Constitution and forward the views to the Commission. Commenting on the anticipated move by Parliament to amend the bill, legal activists maintained that “defects on the Bill for a new constitution were too obvious for the law makers to fast track the process.” “What happened was that the process was politically dominated,” said Fadhili Mashaka a lecturer in the Faculty of Law, St. Augustine University of Tanzania in Mwanza, insisting that “CCM simply wanted to prove they can use their numerical advantage to show they are mightier than the opposition.” Noting that the government’s acceptance of amendments was a slap in the face, he said it doesn’t make sense for legislation to be amended “for the same defects it was faulted hardly three months earlier.” “For CCM to accept suggestions from the opposition camp would have been translated as a sign of weakness on the part of the ruling party,” said Daudi Mwita, SAUT Assistant Lecturer in the Law faculty, saying that is why CCM MPs ignored the demands as expressed in Parliament, to wait to see if pressure will build up for eventual amendments. Mwita continued: “The procedure should start with the public as their views are supposed to be respected, but in this case, despite protests from the public, the bill was signed. Late November, President Kikwete signed the contentious Constitutional Review Bill into law shortly after Parliament had passed it in Dodoma. The bill’s signing was meant to pave the way for the formation of the Constitutional Review Commission, which will collect views on the envisaged constitution. However, the signing had ignored public protests, lawyers and activists arguing that broader consultations were needed to make the new law sufficiently accommodative. In one public rally Professor Issa Shivji said one of bill’s defects was that it was too politically oriented. He suggested that universities and professional organisations should be the ones to suggest the list of names of commission members to be picked by the President.