Voters in the June 23 British referendum on staying with the European Union (EU) or exiting understood fully well what specifics they were deciding on.
Voters in the August 11 referendum on amending the Zambian Bill of Rights do not know what they will be deciding on.
On this score alone, freedom of information has been suffocated by the sheer speed with which the Bill of Rights referendum is being approached under the shadow of the rearranged general elections taking place on the same day.
One crucial pitfall of this setting is that after the elections we will not be equipped to deal with our relationship with donor countries whose interpretation of human rights and discrimination has legalised homosexuality and gay marriage across the West; and where bestiality is now legal (Canada), pressure is on to legalize incest (Germany) and adultery is now legal (Japan).
Our Bill of Rights, with the ‘right to culture’ element, should position us to respond constitutionally and effectively once international economic cooperation is called into question and donors squeeze vital lines of aid because of our laws that will be termed ‘discriminatory’ or ‘segregating’ in light of donors’ human rights standing.
The donors, who speak out strongly whenever they perceive human rights abuse or deprivation, are silently watching Zambia. Come August 12, we will face new pressure.
In our neighbourhood, Mozambique legalised homosexuality in June last year after eight years of government’s resistance to register Lambda (a gay rights group). In 2010, the group took its case to the United Nations, appealing to the High Commission for Human Rights for support.
During the UN Universal Periodic Review of Mozambique in 2011, the UN called for the registration of NGOs working on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity and urged that the authorities speed up the process of legalisation of Lambda.
After August 12, shall we be able to handle that kind of demand when it arises?
As the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) had correctly argued earlier this year, the Bill of Rights amendment is going to be voted for or against in terms of political affiliation.
The referendum can be considered a disadvantaged or lost cause because of the politics that have clouded it: the public language of politicians in the ruling party and in the opposition is in evidence.
The referendum is a dark and unclear mist for most voters as the almost daily ZNBC TV interviews of citizens around the country indicate to this day.
But what if voters will unknowingly say Yes to a bill with delicate loopholes that will automatically break all legal and constitutional firewalls against homosexuality, bestiality, incest, adultery, necrophilia (which is a rising movement in the West) and abortion rights?
In the legal landscape, you get outwitted on the basis of that one fine grain of sand that slipped through your airtight net.
That alone should alert you even to the possibility of a derailed Christian Nation position when the heat is on.
There is no evidence that the churches are even discussing the referendum and its future implications on religious rights—they do not know what the Bill of Rights is all about.
DETAILS
We will refer to the British referendum where voters grappled with details. A total of 17,410,742 people (51.9 per cent of an electorate of 46,500,001) voted for their country to leave the EU, and 16,141,241 (48.1 per cent) voted to stay.
Notably, Ireland and Scotland voted to stay but have to go along with the aggregate majority.
The details count above all else—that is what the Zambian voter presently does not have.
Attempts made to circulate the Bill of Rights have come late and in scattered patches; and it must be overstated ad infinitum that the electorate broadly speaking are ignorant about what this bill is and what details it contains.
Zambia went for a constitutional referendum on June 17, 1969.
That referendum enabled voters to grasp the details because it was not overshadowed by a general election like this year’s referendum is heavily overshadowed.
In the context of a drive to turn the country one-party, the referendum was about a proposed amending of the constitution to remove the requirement for future amendments of clauses protecting fundamental rights to go to a public referendum.
The referendum was to require only a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
According to the African Elections Database, the referendum was passed with 904,337 (which was 85 per cent of 1,103,352 total votes cast) voting Yes. A total 159,348 or 14.98 per cent said No.
A turnout of 1,587,966 voters, being 69.48 per cent of the total registered tally, showed up.
The country’s first referendum happened in the colonial era. Even there clarity of details was evident.
February 1922 saw mostly white voters decide on an amalgamation involving Northern and Southern Rhodesia.
Voters were also electing the colonial advisory council, and 1,417 voters (82.05 per cent of the 1,727 total voters) said No with 310 voters (17.95 per cent) saying Yes.
Then, the majority was generally in favour of the territory becoming a Crown Colony with a Legislative Council.
If the colonialists could be that clear about their oppressive aims and objectives, how could Zambia in 2016 be unclear about the aims and objectives of the Bill of Rights which only a few elites have understood?
The colonial history of this nation was determined by a referendum which charted the way forward for continued colonial domination.
Today, our referendum, in as far as its details are hidden to most people, does not enable citizens to chart the way forward for this country.
The African Elections Database shows that in July 1923 the Advisory Council officially requested that Northern Rhodesia be made a Crown Colony, and in early 1924 an Order in Council was issued by the British Government.
It gave the territory a Governor and a Legislative Council.
Herbert Stanley became the first Governor on April 1, 1924, and a Legislative Council was created in the same year. Its members were initially appointed, until the first elections were held in 1926.
That 1922 referendum was to set off a pattern of changes that sparked the freedom struggle that was fought till October 24, 1964.
The 2016 plebiscite will set off a pattern of changes for which we will be ill-equipped and certainly disadvantaged.
CRITICAL
The EU referendum was so critical that David Cameron toured EU capitals to try and renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership (which began in 1973 following a referendum on the then European Economic Commission), and by February he was confident he had secured some positives. June 23 changed all that British analysts say financial markets reacted negatively to the outcome.
Investors lost more than the equivalent of 2 trillion US dollars on 24 June, which reached a combined total of the equivalent of 3 trillion US dollars by selling on 27 June 27.
Analysts anticipate a loss of 2.2 per cent GDP in Britain by 2030, which could be stemmed if the UK negotiated a free trade deal with the EU to maintain current trade arrangements.
Britain’s departure from the EU means the country will no longer contribute to the Eurozone budget, to which Britain gave 13 billion pounds last year and also received 4.5 billion worth of spending—meaning that the UK’s net contribution was 8.5 billion
Further to that, Britain benefits from no-tariff arrangements on intra-EU imports and exports, with 50 per cent of the country’s exports going to EU countries.
Britain will now be like Norway, which has access to the single Eurozone market but is not bound by the zone’s laws on agriculture, justice and home affairs.
Many reasons caused what is now called the Brexit vote.
We can observe for now that as far back as the 1980s, noted British leaders strongly opposed EU membership because of anticipation that the country would eventually lose its sovereignty to Brussels.
They argued that institutions like the EU central bank, EU parliament and EU court would need to coalesce into a European
Government—which would be a forerunner to the World Government headed by the Man 666 who would be the Anti-Christ.
In the same manner that Cameron toured EU capitals after having announced the referendum last year; and opinion polls and debates were held across Britain, we should have seen Zambia’s ten provinces swamped with massive publicity tours, widespread debates and opinion polls to enable voters digest the Bill of Rights point for point.
Most people cannot by themselves digest and grasp legal syntax.
IMPLICATIONS
In the absence of that, most villagers and urbanites are as lost as Grade One pupils on a matter which has grave implications for Zambia’s whole wellbeing.
The main concern of this column is moral, spiritual and cultural.
Two days after the EU referendum in Britain, a government-backed group in Germany said sexual relations between brothers and sisters should be legal.
The Telegraph Online on June 26 reported that laws banning incest between brothers and sisters in Germany could be scrapped after a government ethics committee said the laws were an unacceptable intrusion into the right to sexual self-determination.
“Criminal law is not the appropriate means to preserve a social taboo,” the German Ethics Council said in a statement.
“The fundamental right of adult siblings to sexual self-determination is to be weighed more heavily than the abstract idea of protection of the family.”
Germany has been rocked by a case in which a brother and half-sister living as partners in Saxony had four children together, two of them disabled.
The couple had been raised separately and only met when the brother, Patrick Stuebing, was an adult, and his half-sister Susan K was 16.
Back on September 25, 2014, the committee published a 90-page analysis of the case.
Patrick served more than three years in prison after authorities deemed the relationship unlawful.
“The majority of the German Ethics Council believes that it is not appropriate for a criminal law to preserve a social taboo,” Dr. Michael Wunder, a psychotherapist and member of the council, told NBC News.
“But the ethics council does not recommend decriminalising sex between parents and children.”
The committee said other genetically affected couples are not banned from having children, and its extensive research found that many incestuous couples are forced to live in secret.
The Angela Merkel government is so far not in favour of scrapping incest laws. But the heat is on.
In April 2014, Japan’s Tokyo District Court ruled that an aggrieved wife should have no compensation as her husband was running an affair with a night club hostess for a business motive.
Media analysts said that the ruling effectively endorsed adultery, as judicial experts said the ruling discussed the legitimacy of ‘makura eigyo’ which is a term for ‘pillow sales tactic.’
‘Makura eigyo’ refers to a hostess running a sexual relationship with a customer to ensure he continues to visit the club.
The Japan Times Online, analysing the case on June 10 last year, said the case may set a new precedent justifying extramarital affairs — as long as the third party is motivated by business interests.
The judge had said as long as the relationship was for business purposes it did not harm the marriage.
In the lawsuit, the man’s wife demanded 4 million yen from the hostess for psychological distress.
She alleged that the woman had conducted a sexual relationship with her husband, a company president,
for over seven years.
LOOPHOLE
Debate remains crucial because the sense and meaning of legal provisions does not lie in the legible words; even what they suggest or imply or avoid can become a loophole for the entry of life-threatening moral values from the West.
One provision warranting debate is Article 20 on freedom of conscience, belief and religion. Its sum total is permission for the open practice and observance of ‘any religion or belief,’ which leaves ample space for occultism and Satanism.
Another is Article 38 on equality of both genders, whose overall impact is to open doors for sexual looseness and abortion rights.
Notably, 38 (a) in its spirit opens gateways to school children to access all kinds of reproductive health and family planning information.
Such articles, and a number of others, deserve refining: but they may pass unnoticed if voters cannot see what they contain.
The circulation of the Bill of Rights before August calls for greater organisational energy and passion, if only to urgently increase numbers of citizens who understand even a little about why we are holding the referendum.
The dilemma is in the great possibility of voters casting a blind vote. We can avoid that.
Email: all.information@ymail.com