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‘Parly can open without Mugabe’

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PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s move to open the new session of Parliament next week has been described as unconstitutional with Harare West MP Jessie Majome (MDC-T) saying the Zanu PF leader was forcing lawmakers to do illegal things.

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s move to open the new session of Parliament next week has been described as unconstitutional with Harare West MP Jessie Majome (MDC-T) saying the Zanu PF leader was forcing lawmakers to do illegal things.

BY XOLISANI NCUBE

Panellists (from left to right) Paul Mangwana, Tendai Biti, Jessie Majome and Dr Pedzisai Ruhanya during AMH Conversations on Thursday in Harare
Panellists (from left to right) Paul Mangwana, Tendai Biti, Jessie Majome and Dr Pedzisai Ruhanya during AMH Conversations on Thursday in Harare

Debating during the Alpha Media Holdings (AMH)-organised public meeting on Thursday on the state of constitutionalism, Majome said the new Constitution stipulates that Mugabe is no longer permitted to officially open Parliament after the initial event which takes place soon after assumption of duty as President of the Republic.

“It is unfortunate that as MPs at times, we don’t question some of these things. We do certain illegal things. There is this thing which next week we are supposed to do. It’s called opening of Parliament. I understand that Parliament agreed that at the beginning of each sitting session we invite the President to come and officially open Parliament,” Majome said.

“This is illegal. The Constitution is very clear that Parliament shall determine as when it shall sit, not the President. It says Parliament has to make its own timetables. What is very disheartening is that the President is failing in his mandate to do what the Constitution provides for to be done. He is not coming to Parliament to present the annual state of the nation address, but wants to preside over an illegal thing.”

Mugabe is next week is expected to officially open the fourth session of the 8th Parliament where he will table the government legislative agenda for 2016-2017 period.

Majome suggested that the 92-year-old Zanu PF strongman could be constitutionally illiterate despite being an intelligent man given his public utterances and attacks on members of the judiciary.

“I don’t believe the President has read the Constitution even though I saw him signing it. I am saying so looking at the way he attacked judges,” Majome said.

Mugabe recently attacked High Court judges after they granted opposition parties their right to demonstrate against his government over allegations that he had failed to administer Zimbabwe properly.

The discussion also featured former Finance minister Tendai Biti, Zanu PF central committee member and constitutional lawyer Paul Mangwana and Zimbabwe Democracy Institute director Pedzisai Ruhanya.

Mangwana, who delivered the keynote address, said most of the challenges being faced by many Zimbabweans in the fight for implementation of the new Constitution were due to lack of transitional mechanism from the old order to the new dispensation.

“If we did like the Kenyans, who put up a special committee to ensure the implementation of the new Constitution, we would have been in a better position,” he said.

The former Cabinet minister said the Executive would not fully implement the new Constitution without being pushed as some of the new provisions reduced its power by transferring it to citizens.

“Politicians won’t make an effort to reduce their own powers unless pressure is put on them by civil society,” he said, adding: “Do you really think that the Minister of Local Government would hurriedly align the Constitution that clips his powers? Even if it was me, I would not do that. People ought to challenge the Executive like what my learned colleague Biti and others are doing in the courts,” Mangwana said.

Biti said opposition activists should be aware that Zanu PF was refusing to accept the new reality — that citizens were now superior to the Executive and that Executive authority is exercised from the masses.

“Let us change the narrative from locating ourselves in one condition of political parties, let us decentralise this fight and take the fight. We have had 12 elections in Zimbabwe, but nothing has sufficed because of the electocentric authoritarianism,” Biti said.

“It’s not surprising that you hear Zanu PF saying that they want to change the Constitution because they are refusing to accept the new order.”

Ruhanya said Zimbabwe has politicians who do not subject themselves to the supreme law of the land.

“The Constitution represents the ought to be, the ideal, but what is the reality? What is the nature of the State that is governing us? We need to understand the political economy of our country,” Ruhanya said.

The conversations are hosted by AMH, publishers of NewsDay, Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard, in partnership with international humanitarian organisation Hivos and the Netherlands Embassy as a way of engaging ordinary citizens in dialogue on national issues.