By Nyima Sillah
The Minister of Justice and Attorney General has expressed that the rejection of the draft constitution would have consequences on the nation’s transitional justice process.
Honorable Dawda Jallow said: “This is not a good sign for our transitional justice because a lot is at stake, the rejection of this draft constitution has far reason consequences for the transitional government in many ways because the TRRC is on proceeding.”
“We expect TRRC to round up by the end of the year or because of the Covid-19 it might go little beyond that. And when they submit their report, they might recommend prosecutions and there is some immunity provision in the 1997 Constitution so how do we relate these things,” he added.
“My mind is open as the Attorney General I have been consulting extensively, government will deliberate on various options available to us so let’s see what will happen over time”, he said.
Though he added that “our aspirations to build a new constitution has been dealt with as the whole process is left to comma at the moment.”
He however said: “The president doesn’t have members in the National Assembly because he was elected as an independent candidate under a coalition banner so he doesn’t control parliamentarians as far as I know. So the various parliamentarians in parliament have their respective political leaders and some of them are independent.”
In normal situation, he disclosed, there would have been a ruling party with members in parliament who can take responsibility for when the ruling party does not support the bill, but that “this situation is a very unique situation you don’t have any ruling party.”
According to him, a lot of efforts and resources went into the draft Constitution and regrettably the way things stand at the moment it has gone on waste, but that the document is still with them and is no longer a draft Constitution.