Additional comments on the draft Fiji Constitution 2013 released to the public by the Prime Minister Commodore Baninimara on 21 March 2013.
The draft 2013 Fiji Constitution released on March 21 by the Prime Minister has attracted much criticism, not all of it fair. There has been a lot of hoopla associated with the Bill of Rights (Chapter 2) provisions in the draft, for example the strident claims that they are not the same as the rights provisions in the 1997 Constitution or other constitutions. An interesting criticism is that the limitations to rights in the government’s 2013 draft are longer than the rights themselves; however, everyone should look at the limitations in the 1997 Constitution before coming to that conclusion.
In addition, these critics should carefully study the 1970 Constitution’s Fundamental Rights chapter (Chapter II) to note the limitations set out there. Even the right to life is limited in identical terms as in the government’s draft. A recent comment from one of the NGOs was that the ‘right to life’ should not be limited. If that were the case, a government could easily find it appropriate to prohibit the right to abortion. Even the UN”s Universal Declaration of Human Rights contains a blanket rights limitation- note Article 29. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Human Rights Committee do explain what these limitations mean.
In the fervour to protest against the government’s draft constitution people need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water!
Of course there are some serious deficiencies in the government’s draft, including in the Bill of Rights provisions, but rights limitation clauses are not the main problem. The main problem is that there is no definition of ‘human rights’ in the interpretation section of the Constitution and one has to rely on the definition provided in the Human Rights Commission Decree 2009 which is, of course, quite wrong.
There is a very good reason for convening a constituent assembly as promised and that is that some of the inconsistencies in the government’s draft can be discussed and ironed out. The public meetings that are being held currently by the government are not sufficient for the technical exercise that is required to draft a legally robust constitution for the future.
Dr Shaista Shameem
April 6 2013.
Fiji Pensioners 
Gatekeeper said:
The process is the problem? Well, it does not have much to commend it. But there is far more than the process to be concerned about. Do we know the meaning of the word ‘repugnance’? Do we know the meaning of the word ‘reparation’?
We ought to become familiar with both and soon. Be absolutely assured that we have a full and complete understanding. Because both are to be applied with regard to any constitution acceptable now. What empowers those who have seen fit to steamroll half a million people into poverty or near poverty to suggest that “All is well in the best of all possible worlds”? (Candide-Voltaire). A beleagured attempt to salvage their professional and personal reputations when they patently have none? Compulsion, repression, the alienation of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money into private hands, the creation of smokescreens such as the Foundation for Needy Children? These children are our children. They suffer because we made it so. It is repugnant. We shall make reparations for it and the world will belatedly come to see and demand that we do. We shall repair the pensioners’ justly-applied incomes, we shall hold the indiscriminate purloining of public funds to proper account. We shall do so because it is just. We shall do so because we are citizens of a land which requires Justice. We shall do so to save our immortal souls and because Jesus Christ died on the Cross on Good Friday. We shall do so to repair our Moral Compass. The compass by which some of us fought for the limbless Children of Sierra Leone, to honour them.
What Constituent Assembly appointed by purloiners would serve any just purpose? Explain yourself. What is more, if you have no progeny to answer to in the future, by what God-given right do you have anything useful or of interest to add? Each and every dollar of public money alienated from public use is to be repaid, accounted for. Each lie and dissimulation to the people is to be dissolved by a Truth, Justice and Reparation Commission. That is how the country will be restored. It is now urgent.
La Passionara said:
Once you stop mixing up religion with justice, there might even be a platform to talk? What gives anyone the moral authority to state only one religion has the monopoly on justice? That attitude is the very definition of ‘repugnance’.
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