PCC Meets to Reviews Draft of Recommendations

Today, the People’s Constitution Commission (P.C.C.) gathered for the second day of their plenary session to dive into the first draft of their recommendations. They’re going through the draft line by line, making sure every recommendation is thoroughly reviewed by the commission.  To put this draft together, the P.C.C. split into six thematic committees, covering areas like finance and governance, and used the collected data to shape their recommendations. Now, all these recommendations are compiled into one document that needs a thorough analysis and discussion by all stakeholders.  As we’ve mentioned before, the P.C.C. has fallen behind their original timeline and is now asking for an extension to finalize the draft. We had a quick chat with Anthony Chanona, the Chair of the P.C.C., about this extension request.

 

Anthony Chanona, Chair, People’s Constitution Commission

“The timeline, or the application for an extension to the timeline, by statute the commission ceases on the sixteenth of November.  And there can be no further extension. unless there is a legislative amendment to the act that takes an act of parliament.  So I’m in conversation with the attorney general to look at what happens next given the timeline. But this document because it’s such a tedious exercise, we’re dealing with the soul of our nation. A constitutional exercise should not be horrid and it should have full scrutiny and transparency as to its contents by the PCC plenary.  The plenary is the voice of the PCC and so we cannot advance a document into any other space than the plenary for them to validate the contents and then it moves on. So the timeline now is at least we should allow all of them to take back this draft for at least three weeks.  to give them sufficient time to share it with their stakeholders. But when we look at the timeline between now and the 16th, we can’t fit three weeks into that. And so we feel that to do a proper process of consultation with the stakeholders, there should be additional time to allow the document to face scrutiny, consultation to continue and to validate ownership. And that is why we’re asking for the extension of time.”