2024-03-02 12:41:45
In Benin, the new revision of the Constitution failed in plenary session at the National Assembly. The deputies invited to an extraordinary session to examine the proposal of parliamentarian Assan Seibou, rejected it in the early hours of this Saturday March 2, 2024. A look back at the failure of the process full of surprises.
After its validation at the level of the Law Commissionthe proposal to revise the Constitution did not have the authorization of the deputies in plenary to be studied and voted on late at night from Friday to early morning of Saturday March 2, 2024. The parliamentarians rejected the new version of the fundamental law of Benin introduced to the National Assembly.
108 deputies took part in the vote. The majority voted in person. But others also did it by proxy, except for one absent elected official who did not authorize anyone to vote in his place. This reduces the number of voters to 108 instead of a total of 109 votes from all the deputies sitting in the National Assembly.
Result: 71 deputies voted for and 35 against; 02 abstained. Thus, the qualified majority is not obtained to begin the study of the proposed new constitution.
The President of the National Assembly, Louis Vlavonou, takes note of this result in accordance with the Constitution of February 1990 revised in November 2019. The fundamental law of 1990 provides in article 154:
“To be taken into consideration, the project or proposal for revision must be voted on by a three-quarters majority of the members making up the National Assembly.”.
Article 154 of the 1990 Constitution
Clearly, we first need the favorable vote of at least 82 deputies out of the 109 in the Beninese parliament before taking into consideration the proposal to revise the constitution introduced by deputy Assan Seibou.
This qualified majority not having been obtained at the end of the vote, Louis Vlavonou assures that the Seibou constitution will not go to the second stage of the process, that of the examination of the law and its adoption by parliamentarians. The President of the National Assembly of Benin specifies:
“The National Assembly deliberated and rejected in its session of March 1, 2024, the consideration of the law revising the Constitution of the Republic of Benin”.
The simple majority (71 votes in favor) will therefore not be enough to modify the law considered sacred in Benin, despite the many promises of President Patrice Talon to leave power at the end of his second and final constitutional mandate which ends in 2026.
Surprises
Among the voters who rejected the proposal to revise the Constitution, there are also 7 deputies from the presidential majority. “The majority of our compatriots are worried when this issue is discussed and especially with what is happening in the countries of the sub-region”hammered Malick Gomina to justify his disapproval at the end of the vote. A former journalist now a member of the Republican Bloc party, Gomina also assured:
“I do not wish to drag out the work of revisionist and spend the rest of the mandate denying the poisoning factory which will be set up the day after this vote”.
However, the revision proposal comes from Assan Seibou, an elected official from the Republican Bloc party and president of the parliamentary group of the same name.
Assan Seibou, deputy of the presidential camp, initiated the revision on January 26 following a decision of the Constitutional Court dated January 4, 2024. The high court had invited “The national assembly […] to modify the electoral code to, on the one hand, restore equality of power to sponsor with regard to all mayors (…).” This decision of the Court implies the revision of the Constitution according to Assan Seibou, deputy initiator of the bill blocked in the first phase of the examination in the hemicycle.
The disapproval of 7 of the 81 Talon deputies reinforces the elected representatives of the opposition who confirmed their status as a blocking minority. The 28 deputies of the parliamentary group, The Democrats, voted against the Seibou constitution as they had announced several times in the media.
According to them, there are material and technical errors to be corrected in the Constitution of Benin, but the time is not right.
Read also =>Proposal to revise the Constitution: the text has passed the law committee stage
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