[Photo: Supplied: Parliament of the republic of Fiji FB page]

The Fiji Labour Party is questioning the legitimacy of the process used to bring Constitution Amendment Bill No. 32 before Parliament, claiming the proposed changes were pushed through without giving MPs enough time to properly examine the document.

Making its submission to the Special Parliamentary Committee, Party Leader Mahendra Chaudhry says the draft tabled as Bill 32 was significantly different from the Constitution Review Commission’s draft, which had earlier been presented to the President and Parliament.

Chaudhry describes the move as an act of gross deception, arguing that neither the Prime Minister nor Cabinet had a mandate to write a new Constitution.

The party says any changes to the Commission’s recommendations should have been discussed through proper parliamentary processes rather than being altered arbitrarily by Cabinet.

“And then, now when this happened, as I say, members had no time to read and scrutinize Bill 32 before its second reading, as it was handed to them at the end of the day on 30th of September, and it’s a document of more than 150 pages. The next day, on 1st of October, the House sat late until two in the morning to finalize the passage of four other crucial bills.”

Chaudhry says the process is being rushed and contrasts it with the lengthy and transparent process used to review the 1997 Constitution.

Special Parliamentary Committee member Siromi Turaga says the Constitution Review Commission had made it clear that its document contained recommendations for the Government to consider.

He adds that this is why there are differences between the Commission’s draft and the proposed changes in Bill 32.

The Fiji Labour Party says people deserve to know why the proposed changes were made, stressing that the process must be transparent and open to public scrutiny.