And yesterday on Sunup on 7 we asked the newly sworn in Minister of Constitutional Affairs his thoughts on the report. He said he hadn't seen the final recommendations yet, but he takes the dissenting views very seriously. He added that they will spend the course of a year reviewing the recommendations and the concerns that some of the commissioners have.
Dr Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Constitutional, Religious & Indigenous Affairs
"I got an ultimate report, the draft that came in about a month prior and this one was delivered to the prime minister directly so I haven't gotten a copy of that. I suspect it might be at my office today but I understand there's an appendix to the report that speaks to the different dissenting views because the report had 167 recommendations in the last iteration which I believe is the case now and then in the last month it went through a process for each other the 23 members of the commission to review each of those recommendations and place a dissenting position if they had any. So I'm looking forward to going through those as well and if you saw in the last House Meeting, we requested an extension of time because the law that was passed about two years ago to put into effect this process requires that the prime minister would have looked at it over a two month period after receiving it the 26th of May but because we saw now 167 recommendations and many of them would have dissenting views, it would be practically impossible to do justice to these recommendations so we got an extension for a year. It went through its first reading and so we're going to hopefully get that completed in the next House Meeting."
Host
"But is it concerning to you, I'm not sure if you've seen the back and forth between Caleb Orozco and the chairman, Mr Chanona, is it concerning to you that Mr Orozco's view is that the recommendation, they infringe on the rights of women, of children, of members of the LGBT+ community? does that raise alarm bells for you that a lot of money was spent in this process and it might seem regressive rather than progressive?"
Dr Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Constitutional, Religious & Indigenous Affairs
"Well, you know he's one of the members of the 23 in the commission so he has all the rights to make his views known. From my perspective I also have to be concerned with the other 22 but no one voice should be left out so I think that whatever was said there needs to be considered because that's the democratic process. And think that at the end of the day, the prime minister and Cabinet will look at all these dissenting views and that's why we asked for the year because we don't take any of those dissenting views lightly."
Email
Print