The purposes of having transitional justice is to ensure that when those incidence would have occurred, we have a process of reconciliation, a process of justice, a process of healing so that in future you are not going to have a recurrence. It is clear to me that here we have a situation where the Executive does not have any interest in having that to happen.
Having said that, I will now go to the Bill itself. The problems which we had first time have not been fully cured. As I have already pointed out the problems that arose first time around where some of the issues which I have already alluded to – where you had poor drafting and lawyers coming up or crafting provisions which even a kangaroo court presiding officer would have been able to point out that this is clearly in violation of the provisions of the Constitution. That poor drafting, there was an attempt to deal with those issues which were fundamentally unconstitutional but however, we still have some issues of poor drafting. I will just allude to two particular clauses.
If you look at Clause 10 (1) of the Bill which talks about persons who appear before the Commission, it is clear that any person who is questioned by the Commission in the exercise of its powers shall be compelled to produce an article and it goes on. That same provision is duplicated in Clause 11 which again states “any person who is questioned by the Commission in the exercise of its…” word for word. You just wonder as to whether these people were fast asleep or whatever. This is something which is a cause for concern. That duplication you also see it when you look at the First Schedule. Clause 2 (1) talks about provision of the Constitution and talks about the appointment of members on a renewable basis. This again is duplicated in sub-clause (4). You find that you have those errors of poor drafting.
However, that is not the end of the matter. The other issues have already been pointed by the Chairperson of the Committee. It is really unfortunate that when you have a Bill of this nature, you would really expect it to focus principally on the victims and survivors. When you look at this Bill, it is very sad that no emphasis is placed on those people who are really the critical persons we want to deal with, the people who would have suffered as a result of any acts of violence. It is important that this be rectified when we get to the Committee Stage so that you have clear definitions which are incorporated in the Bill, in particular, when it comes to issues of victims and survivors.
Another issue where sufficient attention and sufficient detail has not been given applies to the issue of gender. It is very clear that when you have conflict situations, the sufferers and major victims of such incidences are usually the women. If you look at most of the crimes which are committed in conflict situations, you look at rape and offences of a sexual nature, they are perpetrated against women. Even when you look at situations where heads of households die and so on, usually it is the women who are left to look after the children when the father has been killed in conflict situations. I would have expected that any serious mover of a Bill of this nature would have given sufficient detail to issues relating to women who usually are the biggest sufferers when it comes to matters of this nature. I would therefore implore- unfortunately he is not here and I am just hoping and praying that he is going to read the Hansard. I know he never comes to Parliament anyway. I am just hoping that his co-pilot, the other Hon. Vice President will indicate to him that he must read the Hansard so that he can take into account the submissions which are going to be made by Members of Parliament and in particular by the Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and try to take them on board so that we can have an improvement on this Bill.
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