Editorial Cartoon
The Maulid vigil was the night before, where, in keeping with customary practice, songs praising the Prophet of Islam were heard throughout the night, on December 23.
The vigil on the Christian part was less pronounced, more of a memorial than a night-long vigil, and during both Maulid and Xmas Day, barazas and sermons rent the airwaves.
Different preachers, and in certain cases senior religious authorities, had things to remind both the government and the nation on what it takes both to keep the peace and to realize the aspirations of the majority towards a promised land of sorts.
On account of the initiatives of the newly inaugurated fifth phase government, there are measures it has taken that met with all-round admiration, locally and abroad, and there are more questionable campaigns whose only justification is a certain reading of the text of laws concerned. Here danger is lurking.
One reason why errors are being made is our heritage of the spirit of law and the constitution, where the proper owner of land is the government, in which case people are by definition only squatters on government land.
So an edict can be issued where a certain category of people lose their right of occupancy on a given stretch of land or assortment of such pieces of land, and no appeal is possible.
There is vast pain being inflicted on various sections of the population on account of wanton demolitions; despite a degree of civil indulgences, it didn’t warrant excesses.
What generally lacks in that sphere is a recognition of the right of inheritance of a piece of land within the United Republic for anyone who is part of the community, if such person takes to using the portion of land for habitation or livelihood, without objection from authorities at that moment.
If reasonable length of time has passed, and a house is, for instance, finished, inhabited and expanding in its occupants, and someone comes up with an edict that it was wrongly built, that edict should constitutionally be incompetent. No objection at the start implies the right of use.
Such elevation of rights of owning land at an individual level, the only premise upon which those now using disputed pieces of land on which they built their houses, did not come out in the 2014 Constituent Assembly deliberations.
Its thrust of the latter reflected habitual non-governmental concerns with protecting village land from investors’ encroachment, scarcely any discussion of the rights of squatter-type urban dwellers came up.
Since we lack appropriate instruments in a legal or constitutional context, it is vital that the authorities exercise a keen sense of balance, not just zeal.
With various media pundits trying out a balance sheet of the fifth phase government’s conduct some 50 days since its inauguration, let it be said that measures to ensure that taxes are properly paid have received universal acclamation as they properly focus on justice.
Similarly, sharp interventions in how public funds are used in government departments or parastatal organizations were in good sense and vital, but the demolitions leave plenty to be desired.
So long as no public funds keep those people where they live, no one should make it the first point of call in good governance, to get them out of flood-prone areas. Trading in land is better; one seeks to redevelop: he pays, they leave.
SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
