"We're Calling On The Government To Withdraw The Constitutional Bill In Parliament," POLAD

Constitutional lawyer, Professor Lovemore Madhuku and member of the Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) forum has said that the government needs to withdraw the constitutional bill in Parliament.

Speaking to News Day, Madhuku said that the subcommittee he chairs which was mandated with evaluating the Bill made a thorough analysis of the Bill and observed that most of the things in it are not acceptable. He said:

We have taken a two-stage approach and we are calling on the government to withdraw the Constitutional Bill in Parliament and this is what we are going to be recommending to our plenary…

What we did is we went into that Bill clause by clause and some things would be acceptable while some are not acceptable. We looked if there were good ideas in the Bill and on balance we found that most of the things are not acceptable and we completely rejected the Bill.

These remarks are a clear departure from those Madhuku reportedly said earlier. A state-run paper, The Chronicle yesterday quoted Madhuku as having said:

There were people who were feeling that clause is a dangerous clause as a person who is a running mate and waiting to become President may actually harm the existing President. It creates instability, because if you know that I’m going to be the next President and it’s guaranteed by the Constitution it tends to create problems.

Conclusions from the remarks above were that POLAD had given the nod to proposed amendments.

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