I had expected this to be done before the end of 1997, or at the latest, by the Spring of 1998, by which time I expected serious preparations to be under way for elections to the National Assembly and the office of the President in accordance with the Constitution. Suffice it to say now that the government seems to be responding to public pressure to implement the constitution. We ll see. And this will actually answer the first part of the question that asks what a State based on social justice means. Second, we need to be aware of the fact that social justice is a universal principle and its articulation in the PFDJ Charter does not represent the discovery of a new principle by the men who wrote the Charter.
Social justice is part of the common heritage of humankind, as are democracy and the rule of law .
This is a general statement of principles and, as such, is necessarily concise. One additional point. This belief is as old as there have been good people on this good earth, but its application as a universal principle is of recent origin and its general acceptance is the result of slow social progress. Under such general belief, the State is required to secure, within its available means, the social welfare of all citizens particularly those who are disadvantaged. The problem of attempting to be exhaustive or all-inclusive in legal drafting is that you may end up leaving something out .