ARTICLE - CONSTITUTION FORENSICS

OFFICIALS BEGIN FORENSIC WORK TO REINSTATE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS
(Defend Haiti) - By Samuel Maxime

PORT-AU-PRINCE - A team of lawyers and politicians have begun to put together the amended Constitution of Haiti in preparation for its publishing into the official journal of the executive, Le Moniteur.

A team of experts from the executive and legislative branches began on Tuesday, what is being described as a careful task of correcting text that was published not in accordance with the minutes of the National Assembly, in accordance with video recordings of the session and to confirm the accuracy of the articles amended, deleted or modified.

The Constitution of 1987 was amended by a vote in the National Assembly on May 8 and 9. The document was published to the official journal, Le Moniteur, by former President Rene Preval.

Political actors and law experts found that the published version was not in accordance with the votes that were passed in the National Assembly on May 8. These findings prompted the President, on June 5, to declare that the text published by the former president on May 13, had to be annulled due to the irregularities.

The Senate has opened a Commission of Inquiry to shed light on the cause of the erroneous text that was published into the state journal. The commission has called to order Parliamentary members who were involved in the commission for the amendments and the former President Rene Preval for questiong, among other people.