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{
"id": 842662,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/842662/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Hon. Speaker",
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"content": "President’s reservations becoming law, which in effect makes the President a legislator contrary to the doctrine of separation of powers; (ii) whether the reservations of the President which have not been subjected to public participation in terms of Standing Order 127 can stand the test of law; and, (iii) whether the reservations of the President touching on specific parts of the Finance Bill, and not the entire Bill, are constitutional. You will recall that I did give guidance on a similar query raised in the last Parliament in a Communication delivered on 28th July 2015 concerning consideration of Presidential Memoranda and amendments thereto. In that instance, the then Member for Rarieda Constituency, Hon. Nicolas Gumbo, had sought guidance from the Speaker on the following matters relating to presidential referral of Bills to Parliament for reconsideration- (i) whether, in expressing his reservations and sending a Bill back to Parliament for reconsideration upon refusal to assent under Article 115 of the Constitution, the President can make specific proposals for amendment to the particular Bill; (ii) whether the specific proposals for amendment made by the President should go through the entire law-making process of consideration by the relevant committee, including pre-publication scrutiny, public hearings, First, Second and Third Readings; (iii) whether accepting of the text proposed by the President and which has not been subjected to the ordinary law-making process as outlined in (b) above should require a two-thirds majority; and, (iv) whether the House would be properly constituted if, at the time of putting the Question on the President’s reservations or recommendations, there are less than two-thirds of all the Members present in the House. The summary of my Communication then, which is now substantively codified in Standing Order No. 154, was as follows- (a) That, in submitting his reservations on a Bill to the House, the President is not prohibited from including his preferred text of the particular clause, section, subsection or paragraph of the Bill; (b) That, just like amendments to Bills, the text proposed by the President on a Bill need not be subjected to the other stages subjected to a Bill upon publication, namely, publication, First Reading, Second Reading and Third Reading; (c) That, any committee or Member of the House is free to propose further amendments to the Presidential recommendations, so long as such amendments have the effect of fully accommodating the Presidents reservations, the voting threshold for the passage of such amendment or, indeed, the proposals made by the President is a simple majority as contemplated by Article 122(1) of the Constitution. Any other proposed amendment that does not fully accommodate the reservations, or, indeed, is a total override of the Presidents reservation, including his proposed text, would attract the two-third requirement; (d) That, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 1(2), the determination of whether a proposed amendment by a Member or a committee to the President’s reservations would have the effect of ‘fully accommodating’ those reservations shall be made by the Speaker on case by case basis; and, The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}