CITIZENS ARE BEING OFFERED K100 TO ENDORSE CONSTITUTION SUBMISSIONS, CLAIMS CHAPTER One Foundation

CITIZENS ARE BEING OFFERED K100 TO ENDORSE CONSTITUTION SUBMISSIONS, CLAIMS COF

CHAPTER One Foundation has clarified that despite making an oral submission to the Technical Committee on Bill 7, it does not support the Constitution amendment process because it lacks legitimacy.

The Foundation also says the ongoing consultation process is not transparent, alleging that people in some provinces are being offered K100 notes to endorse submissions.

Meanwhile, UPND Director General for Media under the Presidential Support Programme (PSP), Frank Bwalya, says it is wrong to conclude that the process lacks consensus when citizens are actively making submissions.

On Wednesday, CoF Executive Director Josiah Kalala submitted to the Technical Committee that the country should not do away with by-elections to ensure that citizens are free to exercise their political will.

He also proposed that the nomination of MPs should be abolished as it undermines the country’s constitutional democracy by strengthening the Executive’s influence in the National Assembly.

In a statement, Friday, Kalala said the organisation remained opposed to the current constitution amendment process.

“Chapter One Foundation wishes to clarify a recent media report regarding our engagement with the Technical Committee on Constitutional Reforms. While we made an oral submission, our position remains unchanged: we do not support the current process, as it lacks the legitimacy, structure, and safeguards required for meaningful and credible constitutional reform.

We wish to state that our submission does not and should not amount to endorsement. We appeared before the Committee to place on the record our concerns about the adequacy of the process and the substance of the proposed areas of reform.

Throughout our comments on the various Terms of Reference, we underscored one central point: that constitutional reform must be holistic and comprehensive, and that the current approach cannot facilitate such an outcome. Given the interconnected nature of constitutional provisions and governance, piecemeal amendments risk deepening inconsistencies and failing to resolve long-standing structural issues,” he stated.

“In processes of this kind, silence is often mischaracterised as agreement. Our appearance ensured that our position on both the process and the content of the ToRs was registered for posterity, preventing any suggestion that civil society did not raise technical and procedural concerns at the material time.

We also participated to mitigate the risk that submissions potentially harmful to democratic governance or the integrity of the Constitution might go untested, and to ensure that the Committee considered the broader constitutional implications through a perspective grounded in democratic and constitutional principles, legal coherence, and the need to safeguard democratic norms.

Our engagement was a continuation of our advocacy for a legitimate, participatory, and comprehensive reform pathway. We remain opposed to the current process and continue to advocate for reforms that genuinely reflect the will and aspirations of all the Zambian people”.

And speaking during a Public Discussion Forum on Diamond TV, Thursday, Kalala said telling people what to submit undermined the legitimacy of the process.

“Another thing absent is transparency. The committee has been carrying out hearings, again, in public, in the appearance of public submission but also this online tool where people are making submissions.

Chapter One and other organisations have been monitoring the committee in different provinces and in some provinces we’ve found that not far from where the committee is sitting, people are being offered a K100 to go and endorse submissions. People [are] being told what to go and submit. This already undermines the legitimacy of the final outcome. In a process like this, there should have been adequate civic awareness so that the citizens know what the Constitution is, know what is at stake and are able to contribute meaningfully,” he said.

Kalala said the process lacked inclusivity as citizens were not given an opportunity to validate their submissions.

“The process isn’t inclusive or participatory enough. There are various factors that have not been considered in this process. I can give an example of accountability. In Constitution making, the process has to be accountable to the citizens who should own the process. In this process, once the committee gets feedback, there’s no room for the Zambian citizens to validate their submissions. Once the committee gets feedback, they make their submissions to the President. That is not what accountability should be like, and just for contrast, I brought with me the guidelines of the 2012 review technical committee,” said Kalala.

“They had a more than 50-page document that guided how the consultation process should look like. One of the things we overlook is that Constitution making should be reiterated. So, once you get feedback from citizens, you get back to the citizens and say, ‘X number have said this, this number said this, and we have arrived at this, do you accept?’ That process of making sure the citizens are aware of the content and also are able to justify where the content is coming from is absent in this process”.

On the other hand, NGOCC Executive Director Anne Mbewe Anamela said the process lacked inclusion, resulting in the withdrawal of her organisation from the submission process.

Meanwhile, Bwalya said it was wrong to conclude that the process had no consensus when citizens were making submissions.

“Where we stand today, we cannot say there’s no consensus which is on the table for instance, as captured by Bill 7, because the country is discussing. Citizens are submitting. After the report, then we would be able to decide to what extent we’ve agreed as Zambians. One thing that should be made very clear is that the process has been characterised by mistrust, and that mistrust is not caused by any action or lack of action on the part of the current government, the UPND and President Hakainde Hichilema as Republican President,” said Bwalya.

“It’s because of what has happened in the past. Whenever a government embarked on amending the Constitution, which is within the law, there are these suspicions, sometimes unfounded, that the government intends to amend the Constitution to advantage itself. And Zambians know that there were many falsehoods that were spread ahead of where we are today. The mistrust cannot be said to be unfounded in the sense that it is historical. There were things that happened before the UPND formed the government that in some cases justify the mistrust. So, the UPND ends up being a victim of what happened in the past”.

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