Why President returned abandoned property Bill to Parliament

President Paul Kagame recently declined to assent to the Bill on abandoned property and sent it back to Parliament for further scrutiny. Last week, lawmakers received a letter from the President informing them of the return of the Bill and also asking them to amend the articles that relate to the management of abandoned property. Speaking to The New Times, on Tuesday, Johnston Busingye, the Minister for Justice, said the President declined to assent to the Bill because some of the articles there-in were contradictory. The legislation indicates that a unit within the Ministry of Justice shall be created, with the power of attorney to manage or rent out the abandoned property, until the owner of the property declares him/herself, and the property shall be handed back to him/her automatically. “The abandoned property law was not assented to because it seemed to create an autonomous legal entity, with capacity to sue and be sued, receive, manage and account for funds, yet it is supposed to exist within the structure of the ministry,” Busingye said. “The President advised that to have two legal entities, one existing inside another might be a contradiction and requested Parliament to revisit the issue,” he added. Busingye doubles as the Attorney General. Meanwhile, in an interview, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament in charge of legal affairs and government oversight, Jeanne d’Arc Uwimanimpaye, said the Bill will be discussed during the forthcoming ordinary session, due to commence on October 6. The lawmakers last week began an extraordinary session called to discuss a number of pending draft bills. “We did not examine the Bill in this extraordinary session because we had a number of bills to be adopted, within these 15 days, so we pushed it to the forthcoming ordinary session,” Uwimanimpaye said. MP Théodomir Niyonsenga, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, which studied the Bill, said it will be tabled before the plenary before it goes back to the committee for further scrutiny. “We discussed the Bill in our committee and did not see any problem. But we will scrutinise it further to ensure it serves the purpose for which it was initiated,” he said. Following the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the number of abandoned properties shot up. Some of these properties belonged to people who fled the country after taking part in the atrocities while others belonged to people who chose to stay in other countries following the 1994 Genocide. However, with time these properties posed a dilemma in terms of their management, which prompted government to take the responsibility to manage them on behalf of the owners. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Why President returned abandoned property Bill to Parliament