The Chairman of the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC), Justice Edmund Cowan has appealed to its members to put Sierra Leone ahead of all other interests.
Speaking yesterday at the inaugural meeting of the committee, Justice Cowan said “We should be one. We should be united in whatever we do. We are individuals but our duty is to this nation…”
He went on that the 80-member committee should be mindful of “what we do here” urging that they should strive to “get the results the people want”.
He warned that if they fragmented they would fail to live up to the expectation of the people “and then posterity will judge all of us who have been charged with this duty”.
On what the committee is tasked to do, the chairman said that they were “charged to review the constitution not to rewrite [it]”, adding that the people would be watching.
Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Franklyn Kargbo said that the committee was deliberately and representatively composed. He appealed for the rules of procedure to be made flexible for the good of the country.
He said that after the committee would have completed their task, they would submit a report to government which would later send it to parliament before it would be put to a referendum. The Attorney General said that parliamentarians had been left out of committee membership because they would have to discuss its report before putting it to a referendum. He said there would be a bimonthly meeting with the MPs.
Kargbo called for “cohesion [and] reconciliation” and urged for the document to be “all-inclusive”. He said he trusted in the calibre of the committee and its members.
Some committee members expressed concern over the proposed running of the committee’s public information by the ministry of information. The SLAJ representative, Isaac Massaquoi called for the public face of the committee to be different from face of the government.
Even before real deliberations started, there were fireworks in the meeting with issues raised including the number of representatives allotted the two main political parties. The governing APC and the main opposition SLPP each have six representatives, while each of the eight other registered parties has three.
© 7 August 2013
