State of emergency; the President is empowered to do that but it is the Constitution that came from the people. The military being on the streets is subject to the provisions of this Constitution, Sections 212-214 which talk about deployment of the military onto the streets to maintain law and order but being headed by the police. If the police are overwhelmed, then they can call upon the military. You will then say what are the soldiers doing on the streets? My question is – what where you also doing when you were allowing this clause to be in the Constitution? We must be able to understand that the Constitution is a sacred document of this country. What must be questioned is the constitutionalism of it – are we abiding to it or not?
This inevitably results in an unbalanced representation and exclusion of members with necessary expertise to scrutinise the Bill in detail, rigorously and thoroughly as possible which essentially ought to be the object of the Bill at Committee Stage. We come and a lot is done. We now have a situation where Parliament has become factional because there are Members of Parliament from the opposition who have been recalled and are not here and they represent people in their constituencies. Their absence in this Parliament means there is no representation in their constituencies. Why are we so cruel and not allow people to be represented? What have the constituency done because they no longer have a representative?
There is a gap now which is difficult to fill. I have seen some of the most brilliant minds leaving this Parliament because of Section 129 (1) (k). I once went through the list of the opposition in terms of who really was a lawyer; I counted 16 lawyers and I counted the ruling party having 4 lawyers and some being night school lawyers, I will not mention their names. You had 16 lawyers, who had the capacity to scrutinise the Bill in detail before it got to Committee Stage which is an important process. We pass laws and Bills in this House which end up haunting us because we would not have scrutinised and paid attention to detail.
I am not a lawyer, but I rely on people who have gone to legal school. When Advocate Chamisa was in this House I would sit next to him and ask him what the law says. When Hon. Biti and Hon Phulu were here, I did the same. I fed off their legal brilliance and it was important to me because when I then contributed in Parliament, I could talk to people who legally had an understanding of what is going on. In its present system the onus focuses more on selecting Members with sound views, who can be relied on to be loyal and supportive of the government’s position at controversial points of the legislation.
The electorate expects Bills which will become the law of this country to be critically examined by Parliament. How do you critically examine Parliament when the Executive itself has got a Chairperson who they appoint? Basically what we have is a situation where Bills pass through here and it is just rubber stamping. That is the reason why at the end of the day you do not have robust debate pertaining to Bills. At the end of the day, you ask yourself when it gets to the process of voting who really votes. The majority will have their way and the minority will have their say. I have also seen that while the minority must have their say, their contribution which is effective makes the majority think.
The opposition cannot be the government in waiting by not also contributing effectively to the Bills of this country. It is important that the government of the day and the ruling party’s policies are examined by the government in waiting. So, speaking on informed decisions is critical. There is indeed one of the central reasons of Parliament itself – it therefore sends to the august House Parliamentarians with a wealth of experience and knowledge across the whole sector of the nation’s activities. To block that repository of skills and intelligence in the interest of government convenience is a public scandal.
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