Zimbabwe’s Seventh Parliament is “dysfunctional”, Tsholotsho North MP Jonathan Moyo (Zanu PF) said on Tuesday as he defended his scant attendances.
Moyo has been named along with more than two dozen other MPs — including Mines minister Obert Mpofu (Zanu PF), Heneri Dzinotyiweyi (MDC-T), Jameson Timba (MDC-T), Stan Mudenge (Zanu PF), Didymus Mutasa (Zanu PF) and Joel Gabbuza (MDC-T) — as top absconders from parliamentary meetings.
MPs who miss 21 consecutive parliamentary sittings without official leave can be expelled if half the legislature votes for the motion, according to parliamentary rules.
NewsDay this week reported that Moyo attended just one of 32 sessions — on February 28 — since September 6 last year.
But the Clerk of Parliament, Austin Zvoma, said: “With respect to Moyo, he has not missed 21 consecutive days and so he has not fallen foul of that provision.”
However, far from retreating from his stance, Moyo on Tuesday confirmed the NewsDay story and vowed to continue his boycott.
“Look, the self-indulgent hullabaloo over this matter is coming from the usual desperate circles with nothing useful to offer and it is no better than a storm in a toilet,” Moyo said.
“My decision to make technical appearances in Parliament — which should have been dissolved some 18 months ago — is very deliberate and quite considered because I want to make a point about that fact.”
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Moyo claimed he had found it “necessary and liberating to make technical appearances in Parliament”.
Since the formation of the power-sharing government in 2008, Moyo said a constitutional amendment meant that Bills were agreed at Cabinet level and sent to Parliament for rubber-stamping — effectively usurping MP powers.
This had reduced Parliament to an “idle body” where MPs turned up to pick up their $75 per diems at each sitting while debating non-binding motions.
Moyo told New Zimbabwe.com by telephone from Harare: “There are many occasions where you find honourable members taking the floor and declaring that this tribe is better than other tribes.
“If they are not doing that, they are calling for men to be ‘immobilised’ to curb their sexual appetite or the formation of a union for prostitutes.
“The question is: Do you stand up and debate that member and sink to their level, or do you just sit and listen? My view is neither of those are an option, you just stay away from the nonsense.”
Moyo, first elected to Parliament in 2005 as an independent and again in 2008 before rejoining Zanu PF, said the Seventh Parliament was “the worst since Independence” because it lacked authority.
He said some parliamentary committees had scored decent successes in probing public officials, but insisted the vast majority of MPs were incapacitated by the Global Political Agreement which concentrated power in leaders of the country’s three main political parties.
The boycott of Parliament by dozens of other MPs from all the parties was evidence of growing disenchantment with the political order of the day, he said.
“I am glad that the desperate circles who are clinging to undeserved public offices for personal enrichment have finally noticed the point and I hope they will take it and support the holding of the delayed elections to produce the kind of Parliament and the government that Zimbabwe needs and deserves,” he said.
“I say this because I am very clear about why I have found it necessary and liberating to make technical appearances in Parliament by attending only when it is absolutely necessary to do so, and I stand by my decision without any apology to anyone whatsoever. I believe my position is the best and the most rational thing to do given the dysfunctional circumstances of the Seventh Parliament which are as unprecedented and as unfortunate as the dysfunctional inclusive government arising from this Parliament.
“I am not going to change making technical appearances until this Parliament is dissolved as it should have been by now and anybody who has a problem with that should get a life and stop wasting time.The bottom line is that there’s absolutely no need whatsoever for me or anyone else for that matter to go to Parliament everyday only to collect a $75 per diem to listen to honourable members trading abuse and insults without let, or to go there to be part of a captive audience to, or even to debate with MDC MPs who routinely use the floor of the House to denigrate national institutions and processes such as calling for evil sanctions against Zimbabwe with impunity and in gross violation of their oaths of loyalty taken in the same Parliament.”
