Experts to scrutinise constitutional amendment proposals - Lubinda

EXTERNAL legal experts will soon scrutinise the proposed amendments to the constitution immediately after a critic process by a team from the Ministry of Justice in a few weeks’ time, Minister of Justice Given Lubinda has said.

And Mr Lubinda said that the ministry was targeting to table the proposed amendments before Parliament by June this year.

He told the Daily Nation that the ministry had made tremendous progress on the amendment of the constitution and that a team from the ministry would have to sit at a retreat and go through the proposed amendments in a few weeks.

Mr Lubinda, who is Kabwata Member of Parliament, explained that after that process, the proposed amendments would have to be subjected to scrutiny of external legal experts. He however said that the ministry was planning to involve all the three wings of government to synthesise what the team would come up with by inviting representatives of the judiciary and legislature.

Mr Lubinda explained that so far, it was only a small team within the Ministry of Justice that was looking at the submissions and that now they would be subjected to critic by a bigger team.

“What is to be borne in mind is that so far it was a small team within the ministry that was looking at the submissions, but now they will have to subject that to a critic of a bigger team. After that we will send it out to external legal experts who shall also give us their views,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Mr Lubinda said that from the legal experts, the submissions would have to be further synthesised before the preparation of a card memo for delivery to Cabinet.