Leader of the Independent Group in Parliament, Hon. Peter Kenilorea Jnr, calls current GNUT goverment to be more careful on the issue of Constitutional Amendment for the Adoption of the Federal System.

The leader of the Independent group in Parliament, the Member of Parliament for East Are Are, the right wing leader of the United Party, Honourable Peter Kenilore Jnr, took to his online media platform on facebook, to call on GNUT government, to closely consider the amendment to the constitution for adoption to the Federal System, carefully, before tabling it before Parliament.

Honourable Peter Kenilorea jnr highlighted the failure of the former DCGA governments careful handling of the constitutional amendment bill, that sets out the process for Adoption of the Federal System in Solomon Islands, passed, at the 11hr of the eleventh Parliament, as a means to fast track the beginning of the process for consideration of the adoption of the Federal State system for Solomon Islands, which in his opinon, is rushed and trivial.

On his personal media platform the leader of the independent group said;

It’s close to midnight musings: It’s clear from the PM’s press conference that GNUT is attempting to shift the blame on their’s and DCGA’s own poor handling of the amendment to the constitution to begin the process of consideration of adoption of Federal System for SI.

The 11th Parliament passed an amendment at the 11th hr. to the constitution setting out a process to begin consideration of a Federal Government System for SI.

During the debate of the amendment, I raised the issue of the need to avoid using hasty amendments of constitution on a matter of huge significance to the nation for the purposes of campaigning in the upcoming NGE 2024 elections.

I argued that such an amendment to the constitution should have been brought earlier in the life of the 11th Parliament to allow parliament to seriously consider this important matter.

Such a rushed legislation treats such important matters as trivial. With some amendments, I voted in support of the amendment then.

The amendment had a deadline of 31 December 2024 as the time within which the process to decide whether we adopted a federal system was to be completed - an unrealistic timeframe, but one that could be used for political gain during elections in parts of our nation where this issue of adoption of federal system had on the ground support.

I raised concern on the fast approaching deadline in my contributions towards the end of last year when it was clear to me that we would not complete the process by 31 December, 2024, even raising the possibility of an amendment.

In the end, my position not to support the amendment to extend the deadline was a principled one based on the importance to not amend the constitution and then amend that amendment again without any implementation of the original amendment. Our foundational law - the constitution - should not be treated in such a trivial manner. I encouraged GNUT to make an amendment authorizing Parliament to enact a law that guides the process towards consideration of the federal system of government for our nation.

Further, I did not see any specifics for resources allocated in both the budgets for 2024 (passed in the 11th Parliament) and last year’s budget for 2025 that would ensure the effective implementation of these amendments.

Let us, as leaders, treat these significant political processes with the dignity they deserve. Otherwise, we run the risk of doing this nation and her people a great disservice.

I look forward to seeing the PM tabling the new amendment to the constitution, carefully consider it and debate it on the floor of parliament... End of statement.

This statement was made before the next Parliament sitting is scheduled to meet on the 24th of April, sixteen days away.