Wananchi ,the Eighth Parliament of independent Zimbabwe gets sworn in on Tuesday 3 September. They will gather in their numbers,beaming ,gleaning ,grinning ,goonish,befuddled and gazumpled. Many will not know why they are they ,for who,for what ,and how . During the campaign they promised their constituencies that they will build roads ,clinics and schools for same. Now reality will hit them hard,very very hard.They will discover they were lying to their constituencies ,which is no big deal to a chunk of them.They are professionals in this regard. That is not the biggest issue. The issue is they will however not be honest enough to tell the citizen that they were lying and they can not do what they had promised. So when the next election will come a bigger lier comes to remove the stale lier. So parliamentary democracy in altered States as a frame work is reduced to a cycle of one big fibber against another.Who tells the most lies or plants the most fear is a victor. The one question many of them will not be able to answer is how they got there in the first place. Where did they get the thousands that were announced in their name when clearly ,they did not campaign,has no message and had no people. So they will know in their minds that a system viciously rigged on their behalf . They will thus know that ,it is pay back time to the forces that catapulted them into Nelson Mandela Avenue. So this parliament more than any other one in recent times,starts of with a huge debt to the executive. However much more fundamental issues confront this Parliament. They are not the questions of space and accommodation . .The Parliament will is a bloated one with the House of Assembly alone home to 270 men and women. The old colonial parliament in Nelson Mandela will not accommodate same. Another example of the default mode of the revolutionary party.Why the seat of parliament ,such an important national institution ,was not moved in 33 years,eludes one s wisdom. It will not even be the poser of how the committee system will work ,with such an overload of members.Wether or not members of the Senate will be joint members of committees with members of the House of Assembly. It will not even be the issue of resources necessary to finance its operations.The hotel bills ,the transport allowances,the actual operations ,the beauracracy . The customary motor vehicle which more than anything else makes primary elections so vicious in this country.No. The two biggest challenges facing this Parliament are wether it would be able to fulfill its constitutional and historical mandate as defined by time and the constitution itself. The second challenge it has ,is that of legitimacy.How does it navigate itself out from the placenta of illegitimacy inextricably connected to the stolen election. I propose to deal with these two issues ,serialism ,as follows: The New Zimbabwean Constitution on paper seeks to create a new legal order and dramatic paradigm shift from a past riddled with conflict ,attrition,abuse of the rule of law,abuse of power and in general democratic deficit. In short it seeks to challenge the status quo hitherto prevailing and establish a new order of constitutionalism. It is a marked departure from the past. As one of its framers ,I can say that from both sides of negotiators the constitution was negotiated from the veil of fear,from the veil of mistrust and from the firm understanding that Zimbabwe had failed and a fresh start was needed. One of the biggest failures of the African constitution is that it is normally made for certain individuals and for the big man,the President.More accurately it is also made against an individual ,or a group or a tribe . Whilst ours did not totally escape this,it generally escaped the subjective.I can confess that the issue around the running mates clause that were later suspended ,was the subject of the unresolved succession issue in Zanu PF. There is abundance evidence in the document itself to show ,the mistrust to power and this desire on paper to establish constitutionalism and the rule of law in this country. One needs to look at the Preamble,the Founding Provisions,the National Objective Provisions,the Chapter on Citizenship,the Bill of Rights,Devolution,the Commissions, the curtailment power of the executive,the limitations own terms of office ,among many more other things. Most importantly unlike virtually all constitutions in the world is the way that this Constitution protects itself against any attempts to amend same. This is a provision that underpins the lack of trust that was at the negotiating table.Each party feared that the other if left on its own would amend the constitution with great disdain and therefore the power of easy corrosive amendments such as the 19 we saw in a mere 27 years was taken away. Perhaps the greatest evidence that a new order is being established is in article 2 of the same,the provision that underlines that the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the country.That any law ,practice ,custom or conduct inconsistent with same would be invalid. The provision is an unequivocal abandonment of the Westminster model of Parliamentary Democracy and sovereignty . There is no time enough in this limited space to unpack the fascinating origins of this doctrine. But to crudely summaries the same ,Parliamentary Sovereignty was a product of long fight by the nobles against the unlimited powers of the crown from the time of the Magna Carta in 1215,the Petition of Right of 1628 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Parliamentary Sovereignty was thus about grabbing power from an un elected power in the form of the Crown. But revolutionaries since learnt that Parliamentary Democracy was itself a farce.Power had been concentrated in the hands of nobles and landowners who themselves could not be trusted. A new place to reposit power had to be found and which stood above everyone ,King or noble.That place was the written sacrosanct constitution . That was the point of the French Revolution in 1879, the American Declaration of Independence in 1774 and also at the epicenter of the fight against Czarist and the bourgeois in the Russian Revolution of 1917. . The existence of Constitutional Democracy is however not a total negation of parliamentary sovereignty. Done well ,a new progressive Constitution itself makes Parliament a trustee and curator or protector of the constitution itself . In this regard ,the modern Constitution creates a system of checks and balances in respect the various components of the State ,in particular ,the legislature ,the executive,the judiciary and the citizen represented by independent commissions and the Bill of Rights . These all play a counter balancing role against the other. The new Constitution does exactly that. Article 119 of the new Constitution is key and I hope and trust that every member of this grand rally must know this provision by heart. It reads " 119(1)Parliament must protect this constitution and promote democratic governance in Zimbabwe (2) parliament has the power of to ensure that the provisions of this constitution are upheld and that the the State and all institutions and agencies of government at every level act constitutionally and in the NATIONAL INTEREST ( my own emphasis) (3) For the purpose of subsection (2) ,all institutions and agencies of the State and government are accountable at every level are accountable to Parliament." These are serious powers indeed.They are powers of protection of the constitution and oversight and accountability. The above provision thus creates a special parliament . .One which can not be a rubber stamp.One with powers of oversight over every State agency. I like the new power of the right to hold accountable any State organ in the basis of the new doctrine of NATIONAL INTEREST.A very wide power indeed . Therefore the critical question posed above is vital. Will this parliament dispose of its critical role as defined in the Constitution . I think it will be business as usual. One can not expect undemocratic characters to enforce democracy. They will fail the test . We will see another fudge ,of a parliament that will be an extension of the executive . A parliament that will be the grandmaster of rubber stamping. I surely hope to be proved wrong. Part of the challenge of this parliament is its lack of legitimacy as a result of the rigged election. Unsure of its legitimacy ,a lot of time will be spend on cheap triumphalism and cheap point scoring. Indeed if you look at some the new characters in the same ,this is a parliament that will be long on slogans but short on delivery . In short its political illegitimacy will guarantee a polarization that will be answered by the uncritical ,unthinking force of Zanu numbers in the chamber. Illegitimacy always breeds illegitimacy. So I see debate being stifled and where objective motions are being raised debate will be killed by a counter motion supported by the noise of vuvu zelas. I see intolerance where there should accommodation. So these are tough times indeed. Yet again we will be sprinting on a tread mill,going nowhere. Shame. Zikomo.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 21:41:02 +0000
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