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{
    "id": 412823,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/412823/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 575,
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "miscellaneous amendments Bill. Indeed, the Mover did not know that within that Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill were the laws on detention without trial. As history will confirm, that Mover was the first one to be detained under those laws and history will also confirm how his family would later suffer under that law. So, I want to urge hon. Members that we separate issues that we need to bring under the parent laws and legislate on them as stand-alone Bills as against putting everything together. Having said that, I want to focus on laws on justice, governance and order. There is a proposed amendment to the Interpretation and General Provisions Act, as the very first provision. What is proposed is that the President and the Deputy President should be considered as Cabinet Secretaries. You want to question why the President and the Deputy President of a country would be put at one level with the people they appoint. I think it is demeaning to their offices. Let us agree we are in a presidential system. Let us give the offices of the President and Deputy President, whoever the holders are, the honour and distinction those offices deserve. We cannot have our President being the equivalent of the people he appointed following our approval here, unless there is deeper explanation which we do not have at this stage. There is need for a serious thinking and, maybe, sitting with the person who made that proposal, so that we understand the serious change to the structure of governance. Under the Constitution and the relevant provisions – and I may not be able to quote them now - amendments affecting the structure of Governments are amendments that essentially would require a national referendum. I would urge the House that we shelve the proposed amendment in relation to making the President and the Deputy President Cabinet Secretaries and get better thoughts from the originator of that proposal. Second in line, is a proposed amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code to give the police and the magistrates discretion to decline bail. You know I am the force of it. That is unconstitutional. Article 49 (1) (h), in fact, entitles everybody who is arrested or accused before any court of law and gives every person who is arrested or accused by court of law a right to bail. Therefore, legislating and saying that the court may decline bail on these grounds is unconstitutional. You are not only violating the Constitution by taking away what the Constitution has already given us of right, but you are plunging yourself into the days of darkness. The reason as to why, as a country really, we need to make bail in all cases and instances are right save for those compelling reasons, which is a matter of discretion that should be left to judicial officers."
}