By Lamin Njie
Lamin J Darbo insisted on Saturday the draft constitution doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of Gambians – as he once more stuck to his view the document was copied and pasted in ‘major ways’.
The lawyer took part in a national discussion on the draft constitution hosted by Harona Drammeh.
He said: “I don’t think this is a constitution that should be supported. I don’t think it necessarily reflects the views of Gambians.
“You went to the country and then you gave us a constitution that was copied and pasted in major ways from the 2010 constitution of the republic of Kenya. I think that should be a concern really for a sovereign republic like The Gambia.
“I don’t think the balance is right, I don’t think the demarcations are correct and so I will be opposing the constitution.”
The lawyer’s comments come as State House announced the document would be taken to the national assembly in August ahead of a planned referendum early next year.
The government shelled out a staggering 116 million dalasis on the document and the man who led the new constitution effort is Justice Cherno Sulayman Jallow.
In an interview with The Fatu Network in April this year, the top Supreme Court legal mind lashed out at claims his document was plagiarised.
“Constitutional review is different from constitutional theory and one has to be careful about that. If you look at every modern constitution in this world, they borrow from each other,” he said.
He added: “Part of the constitutional building process entails looking at international best practice and the way you deduce international best practice is to look at what other countries have done, and when you comes to the draft there is a principle which states that, ‘you don’t reinvent the wheel’ where something has been properly established.
“So you look at what is there, if it’s something that can be adopted under the circumstance, you adopt that. You call that plagiarism? I don’t know any constitution in this world that is copyrighted.”
