What The Assembly Changed With The Amendments The National Assembly recently carried out some amendments on the 1997 constitution under the bill titled: “Amendment Bill 2001”. The bill, now an act of parliament was a subject of a heated debate before it was put to vote for it become law. The sections affected by the amendments were those revolving around district chiefs, delimitation of constituencies the cadi court among others. Here goes the sections in parallel to the amended version. Section 58 of the constitution originally read as: “subject to the provision of this constitution and any Act of the National Assembly, the IEC shall be responsible for the conduct and supervision of elections to the office of District Chiefs,” which to amendment, this section was deleted and substituted by the following: “The President shall appoint a district Seyfo in consultation with the Secretary of State responsible for Local Government.” It further reads: “The Secretary of State responsible for Local Governments may, in Consultations, with Divisional commissioner, make recommendations to the National Assembly for the creation of new Seyfo district, “This, in effect means that “Seyfolu” which is the new name for “chiefs” under the amendment will now be appointed instead of elected by the people at the grass root. Secondly, section 50 of the constitution said: “The IEC shall demarcate the constituencies for the purpose of elections to the National Assembly. The number of constituencies shall correspond with the number of elected members of the National Assembly,” with the amendment, the section now reads: “An Act of the National Assembly shall establish a Boundaries commission which shall be responsible for demarcating constituency boundaries for the purpose of elections to the National Assembly.” It went on adding: “The National Assembly shall prescribe by an Act, the criteria for the demarcation of the constituency boundaries.” Another important section put up for amendment was section Nine (9) dealing with citizenship by birth. According to the original text as started in the constitution: “Every person born in the Gambia after the coming into force to this constitution shall be presumed to be a citizen of the Gambia by birth.” The following was added to the first version:” Every persons born in the Gambian after the coming into force of this constitution shall be presumed to be a citizen of the Gambia by birth if at the time of his or her birth, one of his or her parent is a citizen of the Gambia. Immediately after section 12, a new section on dual citizenship was inserted and it goes: “A citizen of the Gambia who acquires the citizenship of another country may, if he or she so desires, retain his or her citizenship of the Gambia.” This means that Gambians can now enjoy dual, citizenship and it was a section that did not attract so much debate unlike some other sections during the amendment process. Section 88 of the constitution was also affected by the amendment. Sub-section one “1” of it says: “The National Assembly shall comprise (a) forty-eight members elected from the constituencies demarcated by the boundaries commission; and (b) five members nominated by the president. Before, the constitution spelt out that the assembly should consist of 45 member out of which 41 would be elected and four nominated by the President.” On Annual Estimates, Section 152 was also amended to say: “The President shall cause to prepare and lay before the National Assembly annual estimates and appropriation… The National Assembly shall, within seven days of the estimates being laid before it, give consideration to and approve the estimates.” The original version stated that the president shall cause to be prepared and laid before the National Assembly at least thirty days before the end of the financial year, estimates of the revenue and expenditure of the Gambia for the following financial year. On judiciary, the amendment on section 134 has given powers to the President to appointment of members of the criminal court. It reads: “The members of the special criminal shall be appointed by the president in consultation with the judicial service commission.” Previously, the constitution proclaimed: “There shall be a special criminal court which shall be constituted by a panel consisting of a chairman and not less than two other panel members.” The appointment of the members of the panel was to be done by the judicial service commission subject to the approval of the National Assembly. Further amendments were the insertion of new sections on the Appeals panel and the appointment of a single judge to constitute the high court. The Silent Government A French adage says “Who fails to utter a word agrees” (Qui ne dit mot consent) and we are forced to believe that this government agrees with charges levelled against it and which it chooses to ignore. We need to be contradicted if our perception is wrong. But lets look at the recent charges made against it. One: Very serious charges were made by Hon. Hamat Bah in the Assembly regarding currency notes being reprinted for circulation with old ones to create a surplus government intends to use for the elections. Nothing was said to counter the claim neither from the Central Ban nor from the Ministry of Finance. A very serious accusation which has not only local but international ramifications. Two: As Minister Ousman Badjie pointed out in his speech to commemorate World Telecommunications Day, the Information Super Highway and particularly the Internet is now well entrenched in The Gambia. This simply means that many Gambians are connected and have access to information and particularly to sites where Gambian issues are discussed and debated. Some two years or so, Sedat Jobe had to respond to some postings on the net about what was termed as “Jawara’s threats”. The past month or so has seen postings on Gambia L on the July 22 Coup and its aftermath. One Ebou Coly is giving accounts of what transpired in the 1994 coup and what the AFPRC called the November 11 attempted Coup. Very, really very serious accusations are levelled against members of the former ruling council and nothing, nothing is said here in the country in reaction to these very serious allegations. There are postings to be ignored but there are also postings that need reactions because they deal with maters of life and death. Now, the talk in town is “Did you read part three? Part four? The answer is of course YES! Everybody reads these either on line or from printouts from the net. This points to the fact, that everybody knows what is being discussed which makes it paramount for the government to urgently react now to clear the air.. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------