The bill for the revision of the Ivorian constitution was adopted by the deputies of the National Assembly on July 20, 2023. Assalé Tiémoko, a deputy from Tiassalé, has broken his silence to express his position.
Indeed, the members of the National Assembly gathered in a plenary session on Thursday, July 20, 2023, to adopt the bill for the revision of the Constitution, which mainly involves the modification of articles 90, 94, 94, and 107. The bill was approved by 144 votes “For,” 65 votes “Against,” and zero votes “Abstain.”
According to Assalé Tiémoko, the Minister of Justice failed to convince him about the new provision allowing the President of the Republic and the deputies to propose amendments in a plenary session. For him, this represents an intrusion of the executive into a prerogative reserved for the deputies.
“The President of the Republic, having an absolute majority in parliament, can now, through a government member who will participate in plenary sessions (which were not open to government members before), neutralize all initiatives in terms of amendments by the deputies. There is a weakening of the parliament, in the Ivorian context, which cannot be compared to that of France or Senegal. If the executive wants to make amendments in plenary, with its majority group, it can simply go through its parliamentary group without the need to send a ministry to intervene in the plenary session,” stated the Ivorian deputy.
He then points out that the revision bill introduced by the President of the Republic was examined and adopted in record time (less than a week). “Since April 4, 2022, I have introduced several bills, including a bill precisely for the revision of the constitution. However, for nearly two years, there has been a heavy silence surrounding these bills, and I have received no news despite my follow-ups. You cannot neutralize a bill proposed by a deputy for the revision of the constitution and ask the same deputy to vote positively on a bill for the revision of the same constitution deposited more than a year after that of the said deputy. Such a vote would lack any coherence, and I cannot act in inconsistency against the mandate entrusted to me by the Ivorian people,” he laments.
Finally, he sadly realizes that the politics practiced by political parties in Côte d’Ivoire lacks coherence and, in a certain way, does not primarily aim to protect the interests of the people. “Before our eyes, the three major political parties of the country have engaged in a veritable ‘war’ against their executives and militants who, for their own reasons, have decided to run as ‘independent candidates’ against the ‘official candidates’ of their party. Here and there, threats are made against these recalcitrants called ‘undisciplined’ who must be punished by all means. I would like to call on the leaders of these parties to show courage and coherence in dealing with this issue,” he declared.
