Constitution merry-go-round
Is the current constitution so broken that we have to have 11 drafts? There is that unsettling feeling that somebody will get all the rights.
Exactly where can one find the 10 other draft constitutions?
This question comes to mind following the revelation by the Government, in a press statement in response to the stinging broadside by Chief Justice Ivor Archie that the current controversial draft constitution is the 11th draft!
My lord, not one, not two but three draft constitutions.
Ken Gordon and several other prominent citizens formed a group called the Principle of Fairness Committee and formulated one; Sir Ellis Clarke, an old hand at drafting constitutions, did one all by himself and was involved in putting together another.
That accounts for three drafts. One isn’t quite sure what happened afterwards but we are told that on January 9 there was another draft which was presented to Parliament. This is the one that provoked the ire of His Lordship last week with its proposals for a Ministry of Justice which would have judicial “oversight” to put it bluntly.
Despite Government’s protestations to the contrary, one wonders that after all this writing and drafting and tinkering, Government would want to propose changes to the present arrangements.
One has to wonder whether the final document, which we are told should be ready in 18 months, will not represent the fantasies and insecurities of one man rather than a social contract that is more consistent of a Twenty First Century liberal Western democracy where the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights will be firmly entrenched and the cherished Independence of the Judiciary will remain intact..
I haven’t seen the last draft, or for that matter all 11 drafts, but one that I saw gave an awful lot of power to the executive president and proposes, among other things, the licensing of the press- a measure that could send this country cart-wheeling backwards into the era of the Divine Right of Kings.
So the drafting, writing, drawing up and constitution making go on and on and one isn’t quite sure whether we will benefit from all of this. Or whether we will end up with less rights and somebody else with all the rights.
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