Me Souleymane Soumaré sur la proposition de loi portant révision de la constitution : « A un moment donné, il faudra bien rappeler les députés de la majorité à l’ordre »
“A simple reading of the first paragraph of Article 103 of the Constitution might suggest that members of parliament can form a majority, propose constitutional amendments, submit them to the power of their numbers, and expect them to be promulgated automatically. Paragraph 1 of Article 103,” posted Souleymane Soumaré, a lawyer registered with the Dakar Bar Association, on his Facebook page, giving his opinion on
The proposed law to the National Assembly for constitutional revision. According to the lawyer: “The power to initiate constitutional revision belongs concurrently to the President of the Republic and the members of Parliament. However, while the National Assembly can freely propose and vote on laws, in constitutional matters, it can only adopt a bill on its own if the President of the Republic, having received an opinion from the same assembly, decides to submit the proposal to a vote by the members of Parliament alone. Indeed, the point the Assembly seems to be overlooking is that even if it votes on a bill, paragraph 3 of Article 103 specifies that “The draft or proposed revision of the Constitution is adopted by the National Assembly according to the procedure provided for in Article 71 of this Constitution. The revision is final after being approved by referendum.” This inevitably establishes the principle of a double vote in the case of a bill decided solely by Parliament. In other words, if the National Assembly passes its proposed revision, the law passed will only come into force after a referendum which must be called by the President of the Republic (at his own pace).
The National Assembly can only vote on proposed revisions that become final upon adoption if and only if the President of the Republic (Bassirou Diomaye Faye) decides—alone—that the revision will be voted on exclusively by the Assembly. This is clearly stated in paragraph 4 of Article 103: “However, the bill or proposal is not submitted to a referendum when the President of the Republic decides to submit it to the National Assembly.”
To put it simply, in constitutional matters, the parliamentary majority cannot defy the President of the Republic. At most, it will only waste the Senegalese people's time, because it's not a case where, if the President of the Republic doesn't promulgate a law, the Speaker of the National Assembly does so automatically.
"Legislation should never be done with emotion; only clear-sightedness and competence allow for effective governance."
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