By: Kemo Kanyi
The Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Dawda Jallow, has said that the 2024 draft constitution was never a government-crafted document as claimed by some Gambians, adding that political party leaders were consulted during its drafting process.
Responding to questions during the government town-hall dubbed Mansa Kunda about how the 2024 draft constitution came about and who had participated in its crafting, justice minister Jallow said when the 2020 draft was rejected by the Parliament, the government immediately commenced a political dialogue as, according to him, their [the gov’t] sincere belief was that if they can get a consensus among politicians, then the nation can get a new constitution to usher the country into the third republic.
“Then, there was a series of rounds of consultation and in fact, some element of civil society participated in those consultations. It was not widely consultative because we were trying to avoid reopening of the Constitutional Review Commission [CRC] type of consultation, which was both national and internationally. We don’t want to repeat the same process again. In fact, we do not have resources to do a similar consultation again because all that we were going to do is to look at the areas that we disagreed on and try to agree on. So, we commenced the political dialogue which culminated in political leaders meeting at some point in a venue and discussed all the issues among them. The political parties were represented by their leaders,’’ said Jallow on Friday evening at the Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara International Conference Center.
The attorney-general mentioned that they have agreed certain things to be changed and that those things were captured by the rapporteur in those meetings, adding that those reports were submitted to him as the attorney-general. He explained that the meetings were facilitated by International reputable organizations.
“The political leaders, who participated in those various consultations, are still alive. They’re here. So, whatever they discussed and agreed on was considered. The constitution was projected on a screen and they were going through the constitution clause-by-clause. As political leaders, they agreed to disagree on various clauses of the constitution without any interference from us and a report emanated from that. Now, these are some of the reports that we have submitted to Cabinet with the 2020 draft,’’ justice minister Jallow further explained, stating that these were the basis for Cabinet to look at the reports about the concerns raised by political party leaders and other parties that the government has consulted and the Cabinet’s own position as a government, adding that this is what led to the 2024 draft, and that was presented to the Parliament.
