DEATH OF BILL 10

SO Bill 10 is dead for now and its supporters left reeling by its failure to garner the two-thirds thresh-hold it needed to pass the second reading in Parliament yesterday.

But we are not surprised that it failed. The signs were there that its chances of making the third reading were slim.

This is because the Patriotic Front, though having a majority number of seats in the National Assembly needed to garner at least two-thirds of the Members of Parliament to carry the day.

Bill 10 needed 111 votes to go through after it was presented for second reading to go to the next stage.

The bill however only garnered 105 votes despite some UPND MPs and other Independent parliamentarians voting in favour of the proposed law.

Speaker of National Assembly Patrick told Parliament that the bill had fallen off because the votes did not reach the required thresh-hold.

What actually caused Bill 10 to fail was the extent of the country’s polarisation and the failure to develop a culture of accommodating opposing views.

Polarisation has made the country fail to unite under national causes.

There is a lack of trust among the country’s political leaders such that they do not see eye to eye even on the most basic issues.

This is the more reason why the UPND, the largest opposition grouping in the National Assembly from the word go vowed not to have anything to do with Bill 10.

Home Affairs Minister Stephen Kampyongo’s disclosure that UPND members of Parliament were intimidated from voting for the Constitutional Amendment Bill number 10 and were sequestered somewhere to make sure they missed the voting makes sad reading.

According to Mr Kampyongo, the MPs were ready to join the progressive change but were spirited away to some place and “kept” there.

He disclosed that some MPs were picked from Parliament motel and others from outside Parliament and taken for a `briefing’.

Still, we do not think this should be the end of the road for Bill 10.

The PF can still go back to the drawing board and try to win detractors to its side by convincing them that it means well.

The party should not despair that it could not get Bill 10 passed, just like it failed with the referendum.

As we noted in our editorial yesterday, the failure to craft a constitution that unifies across the various divides takes away any focus towards a national ethos that bestows rights and responsibilities among the citizenry in terms of national development, commitment to national values and above all the maintenance of law and order.

It is sad, as we noted, that the division will not be on the nuance and importance of issues but purely on a regional divide, which if perpetuated beyond 2021 will be a source of great friction, animosity and regrettably disintegration.

This is because the many political parties claiming legitimacy have only succeeded in dividing the nation into regional tribal groupings.

The emergence of so many political groupings with no clear ideological positions makes it difficult to build national consensus with shared values on what holds us together as a country.

Clearly, what is needed is to develop a culture of appreciating one another among the political elite and not trying to undermine the other.

There has been talk that Bill 10 lacked a broad-based consensus which we pointed out was a fallacy because the PF went out of its way to ensure that everyone was brought on board.

But selfish regionalism among some stakeholders prevailed over the common good. That is what the nation should work at removing among our politicians.