The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, is planning not one, but two extraordinary sittings before the end of this year.
According to Mateus Katupha, the spokesperson for the Assembly's governing board, the Standing Commission, the second of these sittings, to be held in the first half of October will deal exclusively with amending the constitution.
He told reporters that the ad-hoc commission that has been working on the amendments must deposit the draft amended constitution by 7 July.
Then, in the 90 days prior to the Assembly sitting, the constitution will be put to public debate throughout the country.
The problem is that the ad-hoc commission has been unable to agree on the amendments. It was lack of consensus between the commission members from the ruling Frelimo Party, and those from the opposition Renamo-Electoral coalition, that aborted plans to deposit the draft in May.
This time Katupha seemed to suggest that, even if there are still two versions, a Frelimo one and a Renamo one, for several clauses, the draft must still be deposited by 7 July.
The key disagreement is over the body that rules on the constitutionality of laws and decrees, and validates election results. Frelimo wants to maintain the current body, called the Constitutional Council. But Renamo wants to rename it the Constitutional Court.
Since this body, in both the Renamo and the Frelimo formulations would do exactly the same thing, the dispute looks like a squabble over one word - council versus court - rather than over any matter of substance.
However, just as in the aborted constitutional amendments of 1999, Renamo appears to be acting on the assumption that it will win the forthcoming general elections. It is therefore interested in abolishing the existing Constitutional Council as quickly as possible, and replacing it with a new body which it thinks it can stuff with Renamo members and supporters.
Constitutional amendments require a two thirds majority in the Assembly. Since Frelimo does not enjoy such a large majority, any change to the constitution requires Renamo consent. It is all too possible that Renamo could threaten to reject the entire new constitution unless it gets its way over the Constitutional Court.
No such controversy hangs over the earlier extraordinary sitting, scheduled to run from 23 August to 1 September. This will deal only with matters for which the Assembly ran out of time in May.
There were 22 items still pending on the Assembly's agenda, and the Permanent Commission will table eight of them for the extraordinary sitting. Of these, easily the most important is the new Family Law.
It was expected that this law, which strengthens the legal protection for women and children, and eliminates a range of patriarchal assumptions embedded in the current Civil Code, would already have taken effect by now. However, President Joaquim Chissano declined to promulgate the law, doubting whether some of its articles were in accordance with the constitution.
He sent it back to the Assembly which must debate it again.
The Assembly can decide to amend the bill in line with the president's objections, or it can simply pass it a second time unchanged. In the latter case, it will need a two thirds majority to override the president's veto, and force him to enact the bill into law.
Fonte: AIM
