Keji Janefer
Africa-Press – South-Sudan. The Executive Director of Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), Edmund Yakani, urged the presidency to speed up the process of establishing mechanisms for drafting the permanent constitution.
In an interview with The City Review, Yakani warned that any attempt to delay the formation of the constitution drafting committee beyond January could affect the timeline of the constitution-making process as enshrined in the roadmap.
“But at the same time it may also affect the election remember constitution is a precondition for the election to take place.”
“We cannot hold an election next year 2024 in December if we don’t have a constitution at hand and the constitution-making process is supposed to be citizen-driven,” Yakani stated.
The activist said until now nothing has been done in regarding the formation of the constitution drafting committee.
“I am taking this opportunity to call upon the government specifically the Presidency and the members of the Presidency to ensure that within the month of January before its end, the constitution drafting committee is established.”
However, he said the formation of the committee must also be inclusive for the meaningful participation of all citizens during the consultation and civic of education.
Yakani noted that the responsibility of forming the committee lies in the hands of the presidency and urged the council of ministers to focus on it.
He warned that more delays in the formation of the committee could lead to the exclusion of civic education.
“We cannot expect citizens to participate in the constitution-making process if they are unaware of the content of the process.”
“I blame primarily the Presidency, and I blame also those institutions that were directed by the speech of the President for not acting on the call made by President that the constitution drafting committee must commence its work immediately”
Yakani, who participated in the roadmap’s drafting, blamed the parties for not telling the truth to the citizens after they signed the roadmap.
“Key datelines of the roadmap were violated, and those key datelines of the roadmap have a link with the constitution-making process, have a link with the election and electoral process.”
According to Yakani, the dry season, which lasts from January to April, is ideal for implementing civic education if the government can form the committee in time.
“And that failure automatically takes us to the next dry season, which is election season, so it means we are going for elections without the constitution. “If we do not provide proper civic education to citizens about the constitution-making process from January to April here, we must consider the 24 months a failure.”
“My conclusion is that from January to June, if we fail to deliver the task of the constitution-making process, the 24 months is useless and it would not yield any result.
“It will be the same as the 36 months that failed and were extended to 24 months. “There is a strong possibility that 24 months will fail as badly as 36 months if we do not achieve constitutional civic education from January to April,” Yakani warned.
In his 2022, end-year speech President Salva Kiir called for all-inclusive efforts in the lawmaking process emphasizing that the process must begin.
“It is now our collective responsibility to support the institutions that will be set up to implement these laws. For example, the work to set up the Constitutional Development Committee (CDC) that will draft the permanent constitution must begin now. This committee will require the cooperation of all citizens to share their views on what they would want to see reflected in their supreme law”.
The Reconstitution of the National Constitutional Review Commission (NCRC), formation of the Constitutional drafting Committee (CDC) and conduct of civic education and collection of data to establish public views on the permanent constitution-making process were to be carried out between July 2022 and January 2023.
Source: The City Review South Sudan
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