Mukandila challenges Kabesha on Bill 7

Mukandila challenges Kabesha on Bill 7

By Tony Nkhoma

LAWYER Celestine Mukandila has challenged Attorney General Mulilo Kabesha to advise President Hakainde Hichilema correctly on the process to amend the Constitution.

Speaking when he featured on Diamond TV on Monday, Mukandila called for decency in matters surrounding the Constitution amendment process.

“I want to urge the Attorney General to do the right thing. Now we are dealing with a situation where our colleagues have decided to come up with a committee without withdrawing Bill 7 from the floor of the House. We need decency in the application of the law and decency in the real sense of even managing the rule of law properly,” he said.

Mukandila, who is Patriotic Front (PF) and Tonse Alliance national youth chairman, advised Kabesha to take the right measures in advising the Head of State.

“So why then do you decide to appoint a committee before you explicitly remove or do away with this document [Bill 7] from the floor of the House? So, there’s a need for decency in the way we apply the law,” he said.

Mukandila said it was hypocritical for the government to behave the way they were in the constitution-making process.

“Because of that, we feel there’s hypocrisy being applied here. Why can’t we have this document, which is before the floor of the House, withdrawn totally by the minister, and thereafter you appoint a committee,” Mukandila said.

He said the judgment by the Constitutional Court was clear and required a fresh Bill to be presented to Parliament and not the illegal Bill 7.

“So clearly it shows that our colleagues are not very genuine in the way they are approaching this matter. They do not respect the rule of law in the real sense. The Attorney General must, in essence, do the right thing by advising his client, being the President, to start following procedures and just to do things in accordance with the law,” he said.

Mukandila said there was nothing wrong with Hichilema following the law, casting doubt on the capacity and impartiality of the 25-man committee tasked to gather views across the country.

“The composition of the list has been made in such a way that it does not have critical stakeholders such as the Law Association of Zambia [LAZ]. It doesn’t have the church mother bodies such as the Bishops of the Catholic Church,” he said.

Mukandila called for the publication of the Terms of Reference (TORs) for the committee appointed.

“We need to know what it is that they have been told to do. Is it just to gather information or to ask and find out from the Zambian people whether this Bill 7 is what they want or not? Or is it to come up with a totally new, refined Bill,” Mukandila said.