TITLE VII. OF THE REVISION OF THE CONSTITUTION
Article 218
[Amended by Law No. 11/002 of 20 January 2011.]
The initiative of the constitutional revision belongs concurrently:
- to the President of the Republic;
- to the Government after deliberation in the Council of Ministers;
- to either of the Chambers of the Parliament at the initiative of half of its members;
- to a fraction of the Congolese people, with the concurrence of 100,000 persons, expressed by petition addressed to one of the two Chambers.
Each of these initiatives is submitted to the National Assembly and to the Senate which decide, with the absolute majority of each Chamber, on the substance of the Bill, of the proposal or of the petition for revision.
The revision is only definitive if the Bill, the proposal or the petition is approved by referendum on the convocation of the President of the Republic.
However, the Bill, the proposal or the petition is not submitted to referendum when the National Assembly and the Senate meeting in Congress approve it by the majority of three-fifths of the members composing it.
Article 219
No revision may intervene during the state of war, the state of urgency or the state of siege, or during the interim in the Presidency of the Republic or when the National Assembly and the Senate are prevented from meeting freely.
Article 220
The republican form of the State, the principle of universal suffrage, the representative form of Government, the number and the duration of the mandates of the President of the Republic, the independence of the Judicial Power, [and] political and trade union pluralism, cannot be made the object of any constitutional revision.
Any constitutional revision having for its object or for [its] effect the reduction of the rights and freedoms of the person or the reduction [of] the prerogatives of the Provinces and the decentralized territorial entities is formally prohibited.
