Mliswa calls for amendment of Zimbabwe Constitution to stop recalling of MPs

No matter what, after a session has been done, we then go and talk about it in terms of those amendments. The whips department is made of Members of Parliament that have been appointed by the party leader in Parliament. They maintain party unity on key legislative divisions or votes. These whips receive a ministerial salary and both the Government and opposition employ them from their respective parties. Without a whip, party policies would be extremely hard to push through. For Government pursuing their programmes in Parliament requires a majority and this could be very difficult to achieve when you are not united with others. We saw what happened and it was out of unity that we came to that Amendment No. 2.

Now that every issue is up for debate, not all Members toe the line. In other words, not all Members obey the leader’s position. In order to maintain unity, a mixture of incentives and punishment are used. One of the issues which we must understand is that when you are being whipped, in most countries, there are incentives given. That Amendment No. 2 that was passed, incentives were supposed to be given but unfortunately they were not given. There is no party that has no budget for incentives when they want to  pass something. Even incentives given to the Members of the ruling party; but that was never done even to say that in doing this we shall be able to show that your welfare or salary which was back dated you are paid for, you get a duty free car.  All these are some of the incentives which are used because that is really what it is about. A carrot has got to be dangled.

There are various methods in luring an MP into voting for a certain issue in a certain way in Parliament. Some of these methods are listed below. Every week the whips department issues a list that goes out informing MPs of any upcoming parliamentary votes; this list is known as the whip. The most important votes are underlined. The most significant is a debate. The most important of which are donated by the three line whips which are usually crucial events and if an individual within the party refuses to obey the three line whip, they can be suspended from the party and this is known as removing a whip. A recent example here are MPs who have failed to toe the party and as a result Section 129 (k) has been used on them. However, their disobedience did not lead to major repercussions as the party was split and the issue then damages the party at the end of the day.

Many believe that the whip system is antiquated and discredited. It makes party members more of delegates for their party. Some Members of Parliament have made a name being mavericks tolerated by their party. I do not know of any Members of Parliament and I think the likes of Hon Nduna, celebrated by their party but we need more in terms of that. I recall we had people like Hon Mutseyami and Hon Munengami at the time as well who would be tolerated for doing certain things and so forth. The problem is leadership; how it can demand party unity when there are factions in the party. The factions in the party are the ones that are destroying the non- performance of the party because the whip is also suspected to belong to a certain faction. When they come here, the factions again emanate. How then do you contribute positively when you are having to deal with factional politics which is started off by leaders. There is no ways whips can be effective in that regard. The unity of the political parties amongst themselves before they unite with anyone is critical at the end of the day. Unfortunately that really is not the case.

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